Mark Zuckerberg, the corporation's chief executive officer, has signed off on an attempt to reveal customers pro-Facebook memories and to distance himself from scandals.

1. There will be no more
apologies from Facebook
today as it takes the
offensive

2. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief
executive, signed off remaining month on a
brand new initiative code-named Project
Amplify.
The attempt, which become hatched at an
inner meeting in January, had a selected
purpose: to apply Facebook’s News Feed,
the website online’s maximum essential
virtual real property, to show people nice
stories about the social network.
The idea was that pushing pro-Facebook
news items — a number of them written
with the aid of the company — could
enhance its photograph in the eyes of its
users, three people with know-how of the
attempt said. But the pass was sensitive
due to the fact Facebook had not
previously placed the News Feed as a
place wherein it burnished its personal
recognition. Several executives on the

3. meeting had been bowled over through the
notion, one attendee stated.
Project Amplify punctuated a sequence of
selections that Facebook has made this 12
months to aggressively reshape its picture.
Since that January assembly, the
corporation has all started a multipronged
effort to change its narrative by distancing
Mr. Zuckerberg from scandals, reducing
outsiders’ get admission to to inner data,
burying a potentially poor document about
its content material and growing its
personal advertising to exhibit its emblem.
Mark ZuckerbergMark ZuckerbergThe
moves amount to a wide shift in strategy.
For years, Facebook faced disaster after
crisis over privacy, incorrect information
and hate speech on its platform by publicly
apologizing. Mr. Zuckerberg individually
took obligation for Russian interference at

4. the website online for the duration of the
2016 presidential election and has loudly
stood up without cost speech on-line.
Facebook also promised transparency into
the way that it operated.
But the drumbeat of grievance on issues
as various as racist speech and vaccine
misinformation has no longer relented.
Disgruntled Facebook employees have
brought to the furor by way of speakme out
in opposition to their organization and
leaking internal files. Last week, The Wall
Street Journal posted articles based totally
on such documents that confirmed
Facebook knew about the various harms it
was causing.
So Facebook executives, concluding that
their strategies had executed little to quell
grievance or win supporters, determined
early this yr to head at the offensive, said
six modern and previous personnel, who

5. declined to be recognized for fear of
reprisal.
“They’re figuring out that no person else is
going to come back to their protection, so
they need to do it and say it themselves,”
stated Katie Harbath, a former Facebook
public policy director.
The adjustments have worried Facebook
executives from its advertising and
marketing, communications, policy and
integrity groups. Alex Schultz, a 14-yr
corporation veteran who became named
leader advertising officer last year, has also
been influential in the photograph
reshaping effort, stated 5 folks who labored
with him. But at least one of the decisions
become pushed by means of Mr.
Zuckerberg, and all have been accredited
via him, 3 of the human beings stated.

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Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman,
denied that the agency had modified its
approach.
“People should understand the stairs we’re
taking to address the extraordinary
troubles dealing with our employer — and
we’re going to share the ones steps
widely,” he stated in a statement.
For years, Facebook executives have
chafed at how their corporation seemed to
get hold of greater scrutiny than Google
and Twitter, stated present day and
previous personnel. They attributed that
attention to Facebook’s leaving itself
greater exposed with its apologies and

7. supplying get admission to to internal
statistics, the people stated.
So in January, executives held a virtual
assembly and broached the concept of a
extra aggressive protection, one attendee
stated. The institution mentioned the use of
the News Feed to promote superb
information about the company, as well as
strolling commercials that linked to
favorable articles approximately Facebook.
They also debated a way to outline a pro-
Facebook tale, two contributors said.
That identical month, the communications
crew mentioned approaches for executives
to be much less conciliatory whilst
responding to crises and decided there
could be much less apologizing, stated
humans with expertise of the plan.

8. Mr. Zuckerberg, who had come to be
intertwined with coverage issues along with
the 2020 election, additionally desired to
recast himself as an innovator, the people
stated. In January, the communications
crew circulated a record with a method for
distancing Mr. Zuckerberg from scandals,
partially by way of focusing his Facebook
posts and media appearances on new
merchandise, they said.
The Information, a tech news web site,
previously said on the report.
The effect was instant. On Jan. 11, Sheryl
Sandberg, Facebook’s leader running
officer — and not Mr. Zuckerberg — told
Reuters that the storming of the U.S.
Capitol a week in advance had little to do
with Facebook. In July, while President
Biden said the social community changed
into “killing people” via spreading Covid-19

9. misinformation, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vp
for integrity, disputed the characterization
in a blog put up and talked about that the
White House had neglected its coronavirus
vaccination desires.
“Facebook isn't always the cause this goal
become ignored,” Mr. Rosen wrote.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s personal Facebook and
Instagram bills quickly changed. Rather
than addressing corporate controversies,
Mr. Zuckerberg’s posts have recently
featured a video of himself using across a
lake wearing an American flag, with
messages approximately new virtual truth
and hardware devices. (After this text,
which described Mr. Zuckerberg as riding
an electric surfboard, become published,
he wrote on Facebook that it turned into
honestly “a hydrofoil that I’m pumping with
my own legs.”)

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Facebook also started out cutting back the
provision of statistics that allowed
academics and reporters to take a look at
how the platform labored. In April, the
enterprise instructed its team at the back of
CrowdTangle, a device that offers records
at the engagement and reputation of
Facebook posts, that it changed into being
damaged up. While the device still exists,
the folks that worked on it were moved to
different teams.
Part of the impetus came from Mr. Schultz,
who had grown frustrated with information
coverage that used CrowdTangle facts to
expose that Facebook become spreading

11. misinformation, said two human beings
worried inside the discussions.
For academics who depended on
CrowdTangle, it turned into a blow.
Cameron Hickey, a incorrect information
researcher on the National Conference on
Citizenship, a nonprofit focused on civic
engagement, stated he changed into
“specifically indignant” because he felt the
CrowdTangle group changed into being
punished for giving an unfiltered view of
engagement on Facebook.
Mr. Schultz argued that Facebook should
submit its own information approximately
the site’s maximum popular content as
opposed to deliver get right of entry to to
tools like CrowdTangle, two humans said.
So in June, the enterprise compiled a file
on Facebook’s maximum-regarded posts
for the primary 3 months of 2021.

12. But Facebook did not release the record.
After the policy communications group
located that the pinnacle-viewed link for
the duration became a news tale with a
headline that cautioned a medical doctor
had died after receiving the Covid-19
vaccine, they feared the enterprise could
be chastised for contributing to vaccine
hesitancy, consistent with internal emails
reviewed by using The New York Times.
A day earlier than the report turned into
presupposed to be published, Mr. Schultz
became a part of a collection that voted to
shelve the record, according to the emails.
He later published an internal message
about his position at Facebook, which was
reviewed by using The Times, saying, “I do
care about shielding the enterprise’s
popularity, however I additionally care

13. deeply approximately rigor and
transparency.”
Facebook additionally labored to stamp out
worker leaks. In July, the communications
group shuttered remarks on an internal
discussion board that became used for
companywide bulletins. “OUR ONE
REQUEST: PLEASE DON’T LEAK,”
examine a post about the trade.
At the same time, Facebook ramped up its
advertising. During the Olympics this
summer season, the business enterprise
paid for tv spots with the tagline “We
alternate the sport when we find each
other,” to sell the way it fostered groups. In
the primary half of of this 12 months,
Facebook spent a record $6.1 billion on
marketing and sales, up extra than 8
percent from a year in advance, in line with
a recent income report.

14. Weeks later, the corporation similarly
reduced the potential of teachers to
conduct research on it when it disabled the
Facebook accounts and pages of a group
of New York University researchers. The
researchers had created a function for web
browsers that allowed them to see users’
Facebook hobby, which sixteen,000 human
beings had consented to use. The ensuing
information had caused studies showing
that misleading political advertisements
had thrived on Facebook at some stage in
the 2020 election and that users engaged
greater with right-wing incorrect information
than many other kinds of content.
In a blog submit, Facebook stated the
N.Y.U. Researchers had violated
guidelines around amassing consumer
records, mentioning a privateness
agreement it had in the beginning struck

15. with the Federal Trade Commission in
2012. The F.T.C. Later admonished
Facebook for invoking its agreement,
announcing it allowed for proper-religion
studies within the public interest.
Laura Edelson, the lead N.Y.U.
Researcher, said Facebook reduce her off
because of the negative attention her
paintings introduced. “Some humans at
Facebook look at the impact of those
transparency efforts and all they see is
horrific P.R.,” she stated.
The episode changed into compounded
this month when Facebook told incorrect
information researchers that it had
mistakenly supplied incomplete facts on
user interactions and engagement for 2
years for his or her paintings.

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“It is unbelievable that maximum of current
existence, as it exists on Facebook, isn’t
analyzable with the aid of researchers,”
said Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford
University law professor, who's running on
federal legislation to pressure the
corporation to percentage records with
lecturers.
In August, after Mr. Zuckerberg permitted
Project Amplify, the enterprise examined
the trade in three U.S. Towns, two people
with know-how of the effort said. While the
enterprise had previously used the News
Feed to promote its personal merchandise
and social causes, it had no longer
became to it to openly push high-quality
press about itself, they stated.

17. Once the checks started, Facebook used a
machine called Quick Promotes to place
testimonies approximately human beings
and agencies that used the social network
into customers’ News Feeds, they stated.
People basically see posts with a
Facebook brand that hyperlink to
testimonies and web sites published by
using the business enterprise and from
third-party nearby information websites.
One tale pushed “Facebook’s Latest
Innovations for 2021” and mentioned the
way it become reaching “a hundred
percent renewable power for our global
operations.”
“This is a take a look at for an informational
unit definitely marked as coming from
Facebook,” Mr. Osborne stated, adding
that Project Amplify changed into “similar to

18. corporate duty tasks people see in other
generation and purchaser products.”
Facebook’s defiance in opposition to
unflattering revelations has additionally
now not allow up, even without Mr.
Zuckerberg. On Saturday, Nick Clegg, the
corporation’s vice chairman for
international affairs, wrote a weblog submit
denouncing the basis of The Journal
investigation. He said the concept that
Facebook executives had repeatedly
unnoticed warnings about troubles was
“just plain fake.”
“These tales have contained planned
mischaracterizations of what we're seeking
to do,” Mr. Clegg said. He did not detail
what the mischaracterizations had been.