META Meta Platforms Inc

By Deepa Seetharaman 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (November 21, 2018).

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg pushed back against calls for him to step down as chairman and said he hoped to continue working with his longtime chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, in a TV interview on Tuesday that addressed a myriad of controversies shrouding the social-media giant.

In an interview with CNN, during which he sometimes stammered, Mr. Zuckerberg said stepping down as chairman in the near term is "not the plan" after some big shareholders proposed to push him out of that role following a string of management missteps. Last week in a call with reporters, Mr. Zuckerberg rejected the shareholder proposal, saying it doesn't benefit Facebook.

According to Facebook's latest proxy, his share of the voting power among Facebook investors was 59.9%, meaning shareholders can't force him out.

In the CNN interview, he was asked if he could definitively say Ms. Sandberg would stay in her role. In response, he called Ms. Sandberg an "important partner" who is overseeing Facebook's efforts to tackle some of the biggest problems the company is facing. "I hope that we work together for decades more to come," he said.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Mr. Zuckerberg has strained relations with Ms. Sandberg in recent months as he has adopted a tougher, more assertive management style. He and Ms. Sandberg have come under fire for Facebook's slow response to uncovering evidence of Russian manipulation during the U.S. presidential race in 2016 and stopping the spread of misinformation on the platform. They have also faced scrutiny for Facebook's privacy practices and its role in inflaming violence in countries like Myanmar.

During the interview, Mr. Zuckerberg repeated earlier talking points that Facebook should have acted more quickly to detect signs of Russian manipulation. He also addressed concerns raised in a New York Times report last week about the company's use of Definers Public Affairs, a consultancy and opposition-research firm tasked with exposing critical information of Facebook's detractors.

On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg said he was reviewing Definers's work with Facebook, which included asking reporters to probe the funding sources behind one group called Freedom from Facebook.

"So far, it doesn't appear that anything that the group said was untrue, " Mr. Zuckerberg said in the interview.

Definers has said only a "fraction" of its work for Facebook included research into critics and that work was based on public records, not misinformation.

But Mr. Zuckerberg reiterated that he didn't like some of the firm's tactics. Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg have both said the decision to employ the firm was made by Facebook's communications officials and Definers has been fired.

The question of who hired the firm has vexed Facebook employees. On Tuesday, Facebook's departing policy and communications chief, Elliot Schrage, took the blame for the hiring Definers.

"I knew and approved of the decision to hire Definers and similar firms, " Mr. Schrage said in the memo, earlier reported by the technology site TechCrunch and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Schrage said in the memo that over time more people at Facebook worked with Definers on more projects, making the relationship less centrally managed. "I should have known of the decision to expand their mandate." He didn't address who made the decision to expand the mandate.

"Responsibility for these decisions rests with leadership of the communications team. That's me," he wrote. "Mark and Sheryl relied on me to manage this without controversy."

The recent critical media coverage adds to Facebook's mounting worries, which include slowing user growth in its most lucrative markets. "In a slowing growth environment, controversies prove a liability," Evercore ISI analyst Anthony DiClemente wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, Facebook's ad management system was down for several hours, making it difficult for advertisers to buy ads ahead of a heavy Thanksgiving shopping weekend.

Facebook said "a server configuration caused intermittent problems across all apps globally creating a degraded experience for users." The company said the problems have since been resolved.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 21, 2018 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)

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