Facebook board says it wanted the company to move faster to fight Russian election interference

Facebook
COO Sheryl Sandberg
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• Facebook’s board issued a statement that it pushed CEO
  Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders to “move faster” in tackling
  Russian election interference on the platform.
• The statement is apparently in response to
  a New York Times report that said that Facebook’s board
  grilled Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg over the extent of
  the problem. 
• The statement denies that Zuckerberg and Sandberg
  blocked any investigation into Russian election interference on
  Facebook — something that the Times report never
  alleged.

Facebook’s board of directors pushed CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO
Sheryl Sandberg to “move faster” to crack down on Russian
election interference, it said on Thursday.

The statement is an apparent response to a bombshell report from

the New York Times on Wednesday detailing how Facebook’s
senior execs dealt with the company’s recent string of
crises. Per the report, Facebook’s board grilled Zuckerberg
and COO Sheryl Sandberg after then-security chief Alex Stamos
said that the social network had not yet stamped out
Russia-linked misinformation campaigns on the platform.

In a statement provided by Facebook spokesperson Nora Chan, the
company’s board of directors said, in part:

“As Mark and Sheryl made clear to Congress, the company was too
slow to spot Russian interference, and too slow to take action.
As a board we did indeed push them to move faster. But to suggest
that they knew about Russian interference and either tried to
ignore it or prevent investigations into what had happened is
grossly unfair.”

Importantly, the New York Times report did not suggest that
Zuckerberg or Sandberg attempted to ignore or block Facebook
investigations into Russian interference. Rather, the report
holds that
Sandberg tried to downplay the extent of Russia’s involvement
with misinformation on the platform, and that she was upset with
Stamos for what he told the board.

Here’s the full statement from the Facebook board of directors:

“As Mark and Sheryl made clear to Congress, the company was too
slow to spot Russian interference, and too slow to take action.
As a board we did indeed push them to move faster. But to suggest
that they knew about Russian interference and either tried to
ignore it or prevent investigations into what had happened is
grossly unfair. In the last eighteen months Facebook, with the
full support of this board, has invested heavily in more people
and better technology to prevent misuse of its services,
including during elections. As the US mid-term showed they have
made considerable progress and we support their continued to
efforts to fight abuse and improve security.”