A Facebook executive took to Twitter on Friday in an attempt to clarify the company’s role in Russia’s election meddling, but the effort backfired.
A Facebook executive took to Twitter on Friday in an attempt to clarify the company's role in Russia's 2016 election meddling, but the effort backfired, reports the New York Times. Rob Goldman, the company's vice president of advertising, has since issued an apology to his co-workers. Wired reports that it read, in part, "The Special Counsel has far more information about what happened [than] I do—so seeming to contradict his statements was a serious mistake on my part…to all of you who have worked so hard over the last six months to demonstrate that we understand our responsibility to prevent abuse on Facebook…my deepest apologies." The tweets that went awry included, "Very excited to see the Mueller indictment today. We shared Russian ads with Congress, Mueller and the American people to help the public understand how the Russians abused our system. Still, there are keys facts about the Russian actions that are still not well understood."
"Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election," Goldman further commented. "I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal." There was a great deal of backlash over the aspects of Russian infiltration Goldman didn't mention, such as Russia's use of fake accounts to spread misinformation and intensify political division. His messages were also read by some as an attempt to diminish the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and reinforce President Trump's position of sweeping denial. In fact, Trump retweeted the Goldman message and noted, "The Fake News Media never fails. Hard to ignore this fact from the Vice President of Facebook Ads, Rob Goldman!" The president followed that retweet with another, that time quoting Goldman's assertion that Russia was not trying to sway the election.
