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Facebook executive admits hiring firm that linked critics to Soros
Facebook's outgoing policy chief took the blame Wednesday night for hiring a consulting firm to investigate and peddle negative stories about the company's critics, including by linking them to liberal philanthropist George Soros.
The blog post by the executive, Elliot Schrage, landed on the eve of the Thanksgiving weekend, and appeared aimed at absolving CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg of responsibility for a lobbying campaign that sparked accusations that Facebook was fueling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
[...] The New York Times reported last week that Facebook, under pressure over reports of Russian election interference on its platform, hired the Republican-linked consulting firm, Definers Public Affairs, which among other things sought to tie anti-Facebook groups to the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations.
Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg can't remember smear firm, but 'some of their work' crossed her desk
Facebook has reposted [the Schrage blog post] with an addition by COO Sheryl Sandberg, who claimed: "I didn't remember a firm called Definers. I asked our team to look into the work Definers did for us and to double-check whether anything had crossed my desk. Some of their work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced.
Soros Philanthropy President Calls for U.S. Lawmakers to Review Facebook (repost)
The president of George Soros's philanthropy called for oversight of Facebook Inc. by U.S. lawmakers after the social media company confirmed it hired a controversial public relations outfit to research the billionaire financier.
[...] In response to Facebook's memo, Patrick Gaspard, president of Mr. Soros's Open Society Foundations, said in a tweet on Wednesday: "So @facebook decides to drop a turkey on Thanksgiving eve, with admission that Definers was tasked by company leadership to target and smear George Soros because he publicly criticized their out of control business model. Sorry, but this needs independent, congressional oversight."
George Soros Sold Facebook, Netflix, and Goldman Stock Just Before They Tumbled
Soros Fund Management, which Soros founded and chairs, exited social-network giant Facebook (FB) completely in the third quarter, while also slashing positions in Netflix stock (NFLX) and Goldman Sachs Group stock (GS). Those three stocks have tumbled in the fourth quarter so far, with Facebook and Goldman setting new lows Tuesday. They are down almost 20% and 15%, respectively, so far this quarter. Highflying streaming-content giant Netflix has tumbled almost 29% since the end of September.
[...] Soros Fund Management sold all its Facebook stock before the end of the third quarter, prior to publication of the New York Times report. Following the report, the head of Soros' Open Society Foundations criticized what it called "Facebook's smear campaign" against Soros.
See also: After latest scandal, does Facebook need to be regulated?
Facebook v Soros: 'Congress must probe'
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 24 2018, @08:34PM (8 children)
Video, youtube - don't watch it if you don't do videos. It's a Sixty Minutes interview of Soros, back when he looked merely ancient. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVmQ05J9tHs [youtube.com]
Amoral assholes are NOT to be confused with asocial assholes!
An amoral asshole will crash the market, if it gives him some slight advantage.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @08:41PM (1 child)
Pot, Ma Kettle. Hillbilly hypocracy infused by Australian RightWing News Corp and Russian agitprop operations.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @08:51PM
Your ignorance is appalling.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @10:16PM
So which table do you sit at during the meetings? Or do you just go back and forth?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @11:11PM
No deeper amoral than those who extol the virtues of Free Market™.
FYI - amoral != immoral
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday November 24 2018, @11:26PM (2 children)
For those confused by terminology.
asocial - avoiding social interaction, e.g. like most geeks are. Assholery is an orthogonal dimension
antisocial - contrary to the laws and customs of society.
amoral - lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something. "Playing by the book" can fall in 'amoral' category - like the military (navy included). Or, yes, like the Wall Street banksters that abide the law (is there any?) You see, it's just business, nothing illegal - why are you against capitalism, are you some kind of commie? (grin)
immoral - not conforming to accepted standards of morality. Like the Proud Boys and all the other groups aristarchus is so fascinated of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 24 2018, @11:52PM (1 child)
Excellent, Sir. It gets tiresome reading posts by the uneducated who don't understand a bit of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 25 2018, @12:22AM
Fixed that for us
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 25 2018, @01:16AM
I'm familiar with that trade and with Soros' methods and strategies.
He makes money basically on governments' and central banks' policies and economic trends.
In short, politicians and central banks do some really stupid things or are just myopic in their goals without considering the long term consequences ( or they just don't see them; Soros does.)
Soros actually wrote a book on how he does what he does - wacky shit and hard to follow.
And Soros does NOT have the power to crash entire markets. He just doesn't have enough money to do that. We're talking about trillion dollar markets. Even Jeff Bezos getting together with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet couldn't do it.
He can't even do it talking about his trades: "I'm Soros and I'm taking this trade!" - there are plenty of others who think he's wrong and would take the opposite trade.
I'm just saying that the financial markets are so vast and complicated that this reputation Soros has among (conspiracy fan) laypeople is laughable to us. He's made some real shit trades that doesn't make it into the internet media "news" outlets.
Most of us WISH we could crash markets on a whim and make a billion dollars a pop! But we can't. It's so very complicated I could go on and on and on and explain all about money and the money markets and the sovereign wealth funds and central banks and despotic governments and free governments and billionaires and mutual funds and ETFs and .....all who have their fingers in the pie.
tl;dr: Soros' reputation is a fairy tale.