Facebook posts an odd thread attacking 30+ unnamed journalists “finishing up a coordinated series of articles based on thousands of pages of leaked documents”

The company decried the use of embargoes to coordinate a coming series of reporting on thousands of pages of leaks, despite regularly using embargoes itself.

VICE 2021-10-19 Edward Ongweso Jr

Context & Ripple Effects

Facebook's thread is a pre-buttal: days before publication, the company is attacking the process behind a series built on Frances Haugen's leaked documents, which more than a dozen outlets including AP and Fox Business have been sifting through as a loose consortium reporting separately. It follows the same script the company ran last month, when it accused the Wall Street Journal of deliberate mischaracterizations and egregiously false motives in its own leaked-documents series.

The attack on embargoes is pointed because the coverage record cuts the other way: reporters who cover Facebook describe a company that lies on the record, ghost-writes op-eds, and demands quote approval, and leaked internal documents have shaped coverage of its news operation since at least 2016.

First-order effects

The unnamed journalists and their outlets now publish under a cloud Facebook has already cast, giving every story in the series a ready-made 'coordinated hit job' rebuttal before a word appears.
Facebook's hypocrisy claim — decrying embargoes it uses itself — hands the consortium's editors an immediate credibility fight over process instead of substance.

Second-order effects

Other companies facing document leaks get a template: attack the coordination, not the contents, shifting the argument to journalism's methods rather than the leak's revelations.
The consortium structure becomes both shield and target — outlets can share the risk of Facebook's retaliation, but Facebook can frame any cross-outlet pattern as evidence of orchestration.

Third-order effects

If pre-publication attacks become standard corporate practice, leak-driven accountability reporting shifts from a contest over documents to a contest over the legitimacy of the reporting process itself.
Repeated accusations of bad faith on both sides deepen the adversarial spiral between Facebook and the press, making on-record cooperation less likely and leak-based reporting more central to covering the company.

The trend: Companies facing damaging document leaks are moving from post-publication rebuttals to pre-emptive attacks on the journalists and their coordination, with Facebook as the most aggressive practitioner.

Discussion

@parismartineau Paris Martineau on x
3 years ago today, 30+ journalists published a coordinated series of articles about Facebook's “war room” for election interference. To get inside it, outlets had to agree to FB's conditions & schedule FB shuttered the war room a few weeks later once it'd gotten press coverage ht…
@loisbeckett Lois Beckett on x
Really striking to see @fbnewsroom describe what appears to be the extremely ordinary, standard PR practice of sharing documents with different news outlets under embargo as if it were a shocking smear tactic they had never before encountered. https://twitter.com/...
@brooklynmarie Brooke Binkowski on x
@fbnewsroom Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooooooooooooou
@rmac18 @rmac18 on x
I've written dozens of stories off internal Facebook docs and discussions and I've never seen the company issue something like this. The only logical conclusion is that the company sees all my stories as 100% accurate. https://twitter.com/...
@samidh @samidh on x
@kevinroose @CaseyNewton But it's just reach that matters, right?
@bobpickard Bob Pickard on x
This is the Facebook tweet that I find absolutely astounding from a professional communicator. “An orchestrated ‘gotcha’ campaign.” Hmm. I have never seen this kind of Nixonian media relations ‘attack and blame’ approach work before in corporate comms and doubt it will this time.…
@donie Donie O'Sullivan on x
From the LinkedIn of the guy who wrote this Facebook tweet. “Communications is a team sport, and I pride myself on deep relationships with the media, as well as with stakeholders, influencers, and even critics.” 😂 https://twitter.com/...
@parismartineau Paris Martineau on x
It's really baffling to me that a company the size of Facebook would feel that the only argument it has left is to attack the general idea of embargoes. Is it really feeling *that* backed into a corner? Or is FB just leaning in to attacking the concept of journalism?
@karlbode Karl Bode on x
like a savvy comms team could address these scandals with well-crafted but hollow contrition and bogus but authentic-sounding humility, but Facebook always makes a bad situation worse by doubling down on “pouty asshole” as a PR tactic, and it's just so bizarre
@repkenbuck Rep. Ken Buck on x
Facebook is whining about their bad deeds coming to light. But maybe they shouldn't have made their platform harmful for young teenage girls in the first place? https://twitter.com/...
@edzitron Ed Dead Redemption on x
I wrote about this on BI (it's paywalled sorry) but basically FB has had quasi-willing supplicants in the media for years and treated them like little worms, and now they're not sure why this strategy stopped working https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@maggienyt Maggie Haberman on x
“We hear” = “many people are saying” https://twitter.com/...
@therealcbone @therealcbone on x
@fbnewsroom FB: We didn't do that. FB:OK, we did, on a limited scale. FB: It was on a massive scale, but we stopped. FB:We didn't actually stop. FB:OK, it expanded, but it's not illegal, so we were within our rights. FB:OK, it was illegal. FB:We'll appear before the cmte, under t…
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
@CaseyNewton 991 meaningful social interactions
@edzitron Ed Dead Redemption on x
seen at least one reporter that has previously told me they ‘loved’ working with facebook's PR in like 2015 laughing at this
@carolecadwalla Carole Cadwalladr on x
Honestly, if you're a trillion dollar global company and you think this is an appropriate response to a major new story coming down the wire, your problems are a whole lot bigger than you realise. https://twitter.com/...
@gaywonk Carlos Maza on x
This whole thing reads exactly like what a fictional evil corporation would sound like. They might as well have tweeted a Scooby Doo villain's monologue. https://twitter.com/...
@3r1ng Erin Gallagher on x
Yes, let's engage the substance of how your tools were setting up social ties between extremists where no ties previously existed by recommending those extremists join extremist Facebook groups and meet new extremist friends. And how you knew that in 2016. https://www.wsj.com/...…
@cwarzel Charlie Warzel on x
i'm reasonably sympathetic to the idea that when you're as big as facebook almost anything ppl find is not ‘representative of the entire platform experience’ but idk maybe if that's the case then you're too big and that's a societal liability you are on the hook for https://twitt…
@anildash Anil Dash on x
I was gonna say “this will make it tough for FB to ask for an embargo on any stories in the future!” but that would require their comms team to give a shit about being blatantly dishonest or hypocritical, soooo... nevermind. https://twitter.com/...
@sruhle Stephanie Ruhle on x
Fantastic news @Facebook When can I schedule interviews with @sherylsandberg & Mark Zuckerberg https://twitter.com/...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
@kevinroose only 991 quote-tweets. most of them presumably very supportive
@ahmedbaba_ Ahmed Baba on x
Facebook is really out here using the Donald Trump playbook of self-defense. https://twitter.com/...
@jessicahuseman Jessica Huseman on x
Isn't it funny how documents being mischaracterized is bad here but when it comes to facially insane misinformation about the election they are like EVERYONE CAN HAVE AN OPINION https://twitter.com/...
@donie Donie O'Sullivan on x
This ought to make the life of a Facebook comms person who asks a journalist to agree to an embargo much easier. https://twitter.com/...
@marietjeschaake Marietje Schaake on x
Irony must have died again: Don't curate says the curator of all curators ↘️ https://twitter.com/...
@carolecadwalla Carole Cadwalladr on x
I recommend this whole thread which appears to be Nick Clegg having a breakdown in real time. https://twitter.com/...
@popehat NotIntoGoldenPopehat on x
Facebook seems awfully agitated about something. Did a teen girl feel good about herself
@ceciliakang Cecilia Kang on x
these tweets may be addressed to “news organizations” but the intended audience is MPK https://twitter.com/...
@brianboland @brianboland on x
@fbnewsroom I'm a former Facebook executive who left the company because I came to understand the depth of research by world class researchers highlighting so many problems and solutions. These documents point to very real problems - that other executives choose to downplay or ig…
@mattmday Matt Day on x
Embargoes can give news orgs time to get a story right, to consider the facts. A gripe I hear often from tech PR is that after somebody pubs a big story, others, under pressure to weigh in, misstate facts because they're playing a game of telephone without the same sources. https…
@naominixwrites Naomi Nix on x
A little context for the non journalists about this unfortunate spin from Facebook: 1)Non-profits, politicians and companies like Facebook often give journalists info under the condition that we don't publish until a certain time. It's a standard practice known as an embargo. htt…
@mattyglesias Matthew Yglesias on x
I like that Facebook's PR team is helping to build the hype for this story https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
Relatedly, how is it that Facebook comms is always so incredibly bad about handling these things? Even when the stories are misleading or overblown, Facebook comms has an uncanny ability to make it all worse.
@caseyjohnston Casey Johnston on x
@fbnewsroom this tweet appears to contain words but all i hear are little baby crying sounds? can you explain
@eastbayhillz @eastbayhillz on x
@fbnewsroom I worked at FB for 3.5 years. Our comms team regularly asked for embargoes before new products, features, events etc.. were announced. Stop it.
@sassymamainla Yolanda Machado on x
@fbnewsroom This is called an EMBARGO- to all reading. EMBARGOS ARE 100% NORMAL and largely how much of the news you see works. This includes food launches, trailers, new toy debuts, TV show commercials, and more. So- don't believe this account. FB cares for FB and that is it.
@arya_kidding_me @arya_kidding_me on x
@fbnewsroom ? https://twitter.com/...
@seanmdav Sean Davis on x
LOL at Facebook, one of the most craven manipulators of content on earth, pretending to be upset by “curated” content. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@juddlegum Judd Legum on x
I agree with this point. Please release the “millions of documents” so we can get the full picture and draw “fair conclusions.” https://twitter.com/...
@stockjabber Edwin Dorsey on x
“journalists are finishing up a coordinated series of articles based on thousands of pages of leaked documents.” I will never understand the Facebook PR strategy. https://twitter.com/...
@kellymakena Makena Kelly on x
today's word of the day is “embargo” https://twitter.com/...
@qjurecic Quinta Jurecic on x
Journalists agreeing to an embargo ... is this content moderation? https://twitter.com/...
@dseetharaman Deepa Seetharaman on x
“a schedule laid down by the PR team” is also known as an embargo, which many organizations (including Facebook) use to announce news. https://twitter.com/...
@mollypriddy Molly Priddy on x
first of all, thanks for the heads up, can't wait to read the coordinated series of articles! secondly, thank you for explaining the commonly used practice of news embargoes! https://twitter.com/...
@therealhoarse @therealhoarse on x
Facebook is currently shitting its pants over a series of stories that are about to come out https://twitter.com/...
@sheeraf She-Ra Frenkel on x
Facebook is trying to front run reporting they know is coming out soon: https://twitter.com/...
@sokane1 Sean O'Kane on x
Very glad to see people are already ripping Facebook to shreds for this disingenuous framing of a standard industry practice, which reads like it was written by a Breitbart or OANN staffer (and was very obviously intentionally done with that voice). https://twitter.com/...
@ekp Ellen K. Pao on x
Yikes. Someone at Facebook thought this thread was a good idea, someone else agreed, and then someone probably approved it, and someone hit “tweet.” And apparently none of them thought about how it might trigger the Streisand effect https://twitter.com/...
@danpfeiffer Dan Pfeiffer on x
It's worth noting that this is how Facebook (and every other company) announces new product features. What a deeply dishonest tweet from a Comms team running Big Tobacco's PR playbook https://twitter.com/...
@thekenyeung Kenyeung.Eth on x
Take away from this thread: Expect a big report from multiple outlets soon about Facebook. The fact that 30+ journalists are working together under embargo suggests that it's a big investigation and not a “gotcha” report. https://twitter.com/...
@bernstein Joe Bernstein on x
Obviously, Facebook complaining about embargos is preposterous and hypocritical. Pure bad faith. But plenty of reporters and researchers have been talking in private about how polished the Haugen rollout was, and I hope someone is looking into that story! https://twitter.com/...
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
“We expect the press to hold us accountable...but” 🚩🚩🚩🚩 🚩🚩🚩🚩 🚩🚩🚩 https://twitter.com/...
@thatpetewoods @thatpetewoods on x
Facebook doing the equivalent of the asshole brother screaming “WHATEVER SHE SAYS SHE'S LYING!” from the other room as his little sister runs crying and bleeding to her mother. https://twitter.com/...
@darth Darth™ on x
mark facebook pls i am listening to tim apple right now can u do this later https://twitter.com/...
@willoremus Will Oremus on x
It's impressive how Facebook hasn't actually seen any of this reporting yet, but already knows it's going to be wrong. https://twitter.com/...
@bigblackjacobin Edward Ongweso Jr on x
lmfao from the same company that will try to bury you if you break their embargos https://twitter.com/...

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