There has been an increase of pressure on the Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg to resign from his position by its investors following a news report published in the New York Times where it has been alleged that the largest social media platform of the world had appointed a political consulting and PR firm that belonged to republic leaning owner with the aim of criticising rivals and for putting them in bad light.

Following the New York Times report, British newspaper The Guardian carried a news report which claimed that the Senior Vice President at Trillium Asset Management –one of the investors of Facebook with a substantial share, Jonas Kron, “called on Zuckerberg to step down as board chairman in the wake of the report”.

“Facebook is behaving like it’s a special snowflake. It’s not. It is a company and companies need to have a separation of chair and CEO,” Kron was quoted as saying.

According to the allegations made in the news report in the New York Times, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative firm undertaking PR exercises for the social media company, Definers Public Affairs, was appointed by Facebook which had “dug up dirt on the company’s competitors and its critics”.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a press call, denied any knowledge of the alleged activities in the news report.

“After reading the article, I got on the phone with our team and we are no longer working with this firm,” he said.

Definers allegedly “encouraged the depiction of Facebook’s critics as anti-Semites and had published news articles criticising Facebook’s competitors”.

The combined role of chairman and chief executive means that “Facebook can avoid properly fixing problems inside the company”, said another Facebook investor Natasha Lamb from Arjuna Capital, claimed The Guardian report.

Definers is far from a normal, politically neutral contractor, claimed the magazine TechCrunch which was founded by a Republican campaign manager known for his dirt-digging prowess.

Any knowledge of the firm has also been denied by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in a statement.

Facebook said that it had appointed and made use of the PR consultant Definers Public Affairs to investigate the funding sources of the anti-Facebook movement called “Freedom from Facebook” to showcase that the movement was not a spontaneous grassroots campaign that had emerged from itself but, as the social media platform claimed, was “supported by a well-known critic of our company,” mots probably philanthropist financier George Soros.

“To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue,” the company added.

Allegations made in the New York Times report about the knowledge and slow reaction of Facebook against the alleged meddling of Russian elements in the 2016 US presidential election has also been refuted by the social media platform.

The publishing of the New York Times report resulted in a fall of 3 per cent in the shares of Facebook at $139.53 which is its lowest level since April 2017.

(Adapted from FirstPost.com)

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