Zuckerberg says not planning to step down as Facebook CEO

  21 November 2018    Read: 1570
Zuckerberg says not planning to step down as Facebook CEO

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he was not planning to step down amid recent allegations in media that the company tried to hide information and mislead the public about its knowledge of Russian activity ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

"That is not a plan," Zuckerberg said when asked if he was going to step down as Facebook chair.

The statement comes in response to the New York Times's article that described Zuckerberg and company's COO Cheryl Sandberg as so bent on growing the business that they ignored warning signs related to alleged Russian activity on their platform and then sought to conceal them from public view.

Facebook said the article contained a number of inaccuracies but conceded that the company was slow to notice the alleged Russian activity.

"A lot of the criticism around the biggest issues has been fair, but I do think that if we are going to be real, there is this bigger picture as well, which is that we have a different world view than some of the folks who are covering us," Zuckerberg said, commenting on the article.

The Facebook CEO noted that Sandberg would continue to work as the chief operating officer in Facebook.

"She's been an important partner to me for ten 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," Zuckerberg added.

Facebook has been recently mired in a number of scandals regarding privacy and other concerns. In March, Facebook endured public criticism after reports emerged that Cambridge Analytica — a company involved in Donald Trump's 2016 US presidential campaign — was able to access the personal data of millions of users without their consent.

On September 28, Facebook announced that nearly 50 million Facebook accounts were affected by a security breach that allowed attackers to use the "View As" feature to take control of some accounts.

US Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is currently leading a probe into Russia's purported meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and whether Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Kremlin.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the allegations of interference and called them absurd. Trump has labelled Mueller's Russia investigation "a witch hunt" and repeatedly stated the probe should not drag any longer because it hurts US-Russia relations and distracts the US government from more important issues.


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