Facebook has ended its relationship with Definers Public Affairs, the consulting firm which cast George Soros as a force behind Facebook's critics
Context & Ripple Effects
The cut comes straight out of a New York Times investigation that showed Definers Public Affairs casting George Soros as the money behind Facebook's critics, then a follow-up revealing how the firm handed reporters ammunition to paint senators grilling Sheryl Sandberg as hypocrites. The termination is Facebook's first visible response to that reporting.
Accountability is already climbing the org chart: outgoing public policy chief Elliot Schrage published a memo taking personal responsibility for hiring Definers and confirming the company asked the firm to investigate Soros — a framing that keeps the question of what Sheryl Sandberg knew alive.
First-order effects
- Facebook immediately loses its opposition-research arm mid-crisis, while Definers loses one of its highest-profile clients at the moment its tactics are front-page news.
- Elliot Schrage, already departing, becomes the named fall guy — his memo admits the company commissioned the Soros research, converting a media scandal into an internal personnel matter.
Second-order effects
- Scrutiny now shifts up to Sheryl Sandberg herself, with later reporting alleging she asked staff to research Soros's finances even as she denied knowledge of the Definers hire — meaning the termination may not end the leadership-level fallout.
- Every Washington-facing tech company working with attack-research PR firms faces renewed press interest in its own contracts, since the Times series established a template for exposing them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, opposition research as a standard Silicon Valley crisis-management tool gets priced with reputational tail risk, pushing major platforms toward in-house comms or more defensible lobbying arrangements.
- The episode feeds the broader post-2016 reckoning over how platforms influence political discourse — not just through their products, but through the undisclosed campaigns they run to defend themselves.
The trend: Silicon Valley's outsourced opposition-research playbook is collapsing under investigative press scrutiny, with accountability moving from contractors up to named executives.