Mark Zuckerberg won’t be relinquishing his position as Facebook’s chairman anytime soon, despite a pile-up of scandals for the company in the past year.
In a Tuesday interview with CNN Business, Mr. Zuckerberg defended his company, top lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg, and his leadership in light of recent revelations of ties to a controversial PR firm. He said stepping down is “not the plan.”
As for Ms. Sandberg, she won’t be going anywhere, either.
“Sheryl is a really important part of this company and is leading a lot of the efforts for a lot of the biggest issues that we have,” Mr. Zuckerberg told CNN Business. “She’s been an important partner to me for 10 years. I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done together, and I hope that we work together for decades more to come.”
Last week, The New York Times reported that Definers Public Affairs worked to smear critics, publish negative articles on rivals such as Google and Apple, and link Democrat backer George Soros to an anti-Facebook movement.
Mr. Zuckerberg has denied large parts of the report, but it has garnered a massive wave of backlash aimed at him and Ms. Sandberg.
The company has come under fire for a series of scandals from Cambridge Analytica to alleged conservative suppression to Russian trolls manipulating content on the platform.
Mr. Zuckerberg said the company is continuously working to update its systems, but mistakes are inevitable.
“There’s always going to be issues,” he said. “When you’re serving a community of 2 billion people, there’s going to be somebody posting that is problematic, that gets through the systems we have in place, no matter how advanced the systems are.”
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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