Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, Personally Asked The Company Staff to Probe George Soros

• Facebook revealed on Thursday that the company probed George Soros’ financial motivations.
• The company conducted the probe after being criticized by the billionaire over its failure to control the rise of fake news.
• The social media platform had suspected Soros of influencing the company’s stocks.

Facebook revealed that COO Sheryl Sandberg asked the company’s communications staff to conduct an investigation on billionaire George Soros’ financial interests. Sandberg initiated an inquiry to senior comms executives and policy executives to find out what the billionaire’s interests were behind criticizing the social media platform.

Soros had bashed Facebook in his speech back in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The speech was made at the time the company was facing one of its recent struggles around the Russian fake news campaigns and the rise of hate speech on the platform.

The Facebook spokesperson who revealed details about the inquiry stated “Mr. Soros is a prominent investor and we looked into his investments and trading activity related to Facebook. That research was already underway when Sheryl sent an email asking if Mr. Soros had shorted Facebook's stock," the spokesperson said. Sheryl never directed research on Freedom from Facebook. But as she said before she takes full responsibility for any activity that happened on her watch."

Earlier in November, a report revealed Sandberg and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had played down the company’s efforts to assess the misinformation campaigns in Russia. The report also revealed the social media platform had hired a PR company to subject Soros to anti-Semitic attacks.

Sandberg had defended against the claims but admitted that the company did not respond to the rise of fake news and misinformation campaigns on the platform fast enough. She also revealed that she was unaware of any PR companies being hired to defame George Soros. She also stated that she has respect for the businessman and was unaware of any internal defamation campaigns conducted by the company. However, Sandberg’s statement has been met with skepticism, and anti-Facebook groups are not willing to take her words at face value.

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