TechCrunch is in the heart of Japan and we’ve been hearing from some of Tokyo’s brightest entrepreneurs competing to win the Battlefield startup competition here. We’ve whittled down the group of 20 startups that have presented onstage for our judges, and we’re proud to announce the winner of TechCrunch Tokyo 2018.
The startup is looking to leverage the simple housefly as a solution to the global food crisis, helping curve starvation by creating high-quality organic fertilizer and animal feed in a manner that’s much quicker than existing methods. The company’s secret weapon is a breed of flies that the company claims is more resilient and more effective. The larva help break down and dry out animal excrement which is used as high-grade fertilizer while the larva are used as feed for birds and fish. This process takes just a week, compared to the 2-3 months other solutions take.
Musca was selected after impressing our expert judges in their first round of presentation before being selected for a second round alongside the teams from Job Rainbow, Kuraseru, Aeronext, Pol and Eco-Pork.
Musca will take a home a check for 1 million yen and bragging rights as one of the top young startups in Japan.
In the wake of a fairly catastrophic behind the scenes glimpse into Facebook’s high-level decision making, one question remains: Who brought a controversial Republican opposition research firm into the fold?
In a long call with reporters on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg denied any knowledge of his company’s own dealings with Definers Public Affairs, the firm in question. Definers Public Affairs is “an outfit of elite GOP operatives” specializing in opposition research — a cutthroat dark art that’s the norm in politics but anomalous in virtue-conscious Silicon Valley.
Founded by a Republican campaign manager lauded for his dirt-digging prowess, Definers is far from a normal, politically neutral contractor. For one, the company shares staff and office space with America Rising, its oppo research-focused PAC, as well as a right-leaning news aggregator called NTK Network that surfaces stories placed by the company’s other wings.
In one effort, Definers pushed back against Facebook critics with a narrative that linked the social network’s detractors to George Soros, the billionaire Democrat and frequent target of anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
Zuckerberg did not mince words about his attitude toward his company’s relationship with Definers. “I learned about this yesterday. In general, this kind of firm might be normal in Washington…. but it’s not the kind of firm that Facebook should be working with,” Zuckerberg said on Thursday, noting that Facebook had cut ties with the firm.
In her statement late on Thursday, Sheryl Sandberg denied any knowledge of the firm too, stating that she didn’t know about the work they were doing for Facebook but “should have.” In the predictably flimsy and characteristically late response, Sandberg denounced conspiracy theories targeting Soros as “abhorrent.”
While the company still hasn’t explained how Facebook tapped the Republican-led firm for crisis communications, there are a few educated guesses to be made.
(TechCrunch contacted Facebook with questions about the scope of the firm’s work and how the relationship began and will update this story if we learn more.)
Other ties to the oppo research group
After denying any knowledge of Definers — curious given that Facebook itself stated that its “relationship with Definers was well known by the media” — Zuckerberg landed on an explanation: “Someone on our comms team must have hired them.” While this passing of the buck is questionable, it’s also probably true.
In fact, a noteworthy chunk of Facebook’s communications team has direct ties to Definers founder Matt Rhoades, who formerly ran Mitt Romney’s campaign bid for president. Facebook’s current Director of Policy Communications Andrea Saul served as the National Press Secretary for the Romney for President campaign from early 2011 to November 2012 under Rhoades. After the Romney campaign dried up, Saul went to work doing PR for Sheryl Sandberg’s nonprofit LeanIn.org for two years and found her way to Facebook in mid-2016.
Jackie Rooney, a Facebook spokesperson and member of Facebook’s Corporate and Internal Communications team, served on the Romney campaign as Chief of Staff to the campaign manager, Matt Rhoades. Rooney has been with Facebook for almost six years. Carolyn Glanville of Facebook’s Corporate Communications team, a relatively new hire at Facebook, also served on the Romney campaign as Deputy Communications Director.
A handful of other Facebook product team members also worked on the Romney campaign though were less directly connected to Rhoades. Romney has fundraised for Definers sister firm, the America Rising PAC, as recently as 2015. America Rising’s stated goal is to serve as “an independent organization that can drive the toughest negative narrative against Democrats.”
Beyond Facebook’s comms connections, another educated guess at the Definers culprit points to Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s deeply influential longtime chief lobbyist.
Kaplan, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Public Policy, served in the George W. Bush White House from 2001 until 2009, first as the Special Assistant to the President for Policy and later as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy where he “integrated the execution of legislative, communications, and external outreach and policy strategies.” Both Rhoades and Pounder — Definers founder and President, respectively — worked on the Bush campaign in 2004 and went on to serve in the White House after the Bush campaign prevailed, developing some renown for their opposition research work.
“We distill and strategically deploy public information to build and influence media narratives, move public opinion and provide powerful ammunition for your public relations and government affairs efforts,” the group more commonly called Definers boasts. “Nobody else can say the same.”
Chain of Command
Having attended Harvard together, Kaplan and Sandberg are close. At Facebook, Kaplan reported to Communications and Public Policy VP Elliot Schrage before Schrage’s departure announced this June. Schrage reported to Sandberg, though Kaplan was often looped into high level decision making as well as part of “an elite group” of senior executives at the company.
According to the New York Times report, Facebook’s involvement with Definers began prior to October 2017, likely after the group set up shop in Silicon Valley a few months prior. While those conversations at times addressed content controversies, it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t also shape overarching communications strategy in the midst of ongoing crises as well.
After Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal in March, Kaplan urged Sandberg to ramp up the lobbying efforts of fellow Bush administration alum Kevin Martin. Around the same time Facebook again “expanded” its work with Definers, switching to a more offensive strategy aligned with the on-the-attack style that the firm specializes in.
Like any decent political operative, Kaplan usually shirks the limelight — but not lately. Kaplan made headlines recently by appearing in the supporters section for Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh during the nationally televised hearing. A week later, Kaplan and his wife hosted a celebration party for those who had worked on the Kavanaugh nomination that was attended by the nominee himself.
If there was a time when Facebook’s relationship with Republicans was in fact strained, Silicon Valley’s premier equivocator has swung fully the other way with help from Kaplan. While left-leaning Silicon Valley might balk, his deep Republican establishment ties remain more of an asset than a liability to Facebook and have allowed him to serve effectively in his role for more than 10 years at the company. Facebook continues to scratch its East Coast lobbying itch while giving lip service to West Coast political ideals and generally telling everyone what they want to hear.
The buck stops where
One of tech’s biggest companies bringing a Republican political oppo outfit in to mitigate a relentless series of PR catastrophes is noteworthy in its own right, but Zuckerberg’s ignorance of Facebook’s dalliance with Definers makes the whole thing even more odd. Who knew what and when? Did Sheryl Sandberg really not know that the company was contracting with the group? Given her closeness to Kaplan, Schrage, and her extreme awareness of Facebook’s image, cultivated via the comms team, is that even possible?
As Facebook’s two top executives theatrically recoil in horror at their own company’s foray into the political dark arts, they might be surprised to learn that the oppo is in fact coming from inside the house.
58.com, the Craiglist of China,is making a massive push to pick up rural users as it hedges China’s economic uncertainties. During the third quarter, revenues grew 33.2 percent to $527 million and net income jumped 106 percent to $106 million year-over-year.
The classifies giant said in Thursday’s earnings call that it added over 100 million new users in 2018 for 58 Town, its app aimed at the new wave of internet users outside China’s megacities. Continued growth in the less developed regions, the firm believes, will act as a buffer against China’s economic uncertainties.
“Despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment, the China market remains massive and we continue to see enormous opportunities in lower-tier cities and towns where product innovation and technological advances are driving offline-to-online user conversion and substantially improving the services we can offer,” said the firm’s chief executive officer and chairman Michael Yao.
Like its sibling, 58 Town lets users list trading arrangements spanning from jobs to used furniture, akin to how Craigslist works. It has the additional flavor of a small-town life, such as notices of missing people, which would not work for a city with over 20 million people like Beijing.
The rapid growth of 58 Town is a testimony to the potential outside China’s urban centers. Cheap smartphones and the ubiquity of social media platforms, in particular, have accelerated the app’s growth, Yao said in the call.
With Tencent being its strategic investor, 58.com is able to tap into the massive user base on the social giant’s WeChat messaging app. Indeed, “WeChat-based [users] on 58 Town platform have grown beyond” the company’s “expectation since the summer of 2018,” said Yao. Users are able to access 58 Town via WeChat’s “mini-program” setup, a form of lightweight apps that run within the messenger without additional downloads.
Other internet players eyeing China’s hinterlands are Pinduoduo, an emerging challenger to Alibaba and JD.com that listed in the US in July, as well as Qutoutiao, a contender to ByteDance’s news aggregator Jinri Toutiao that also went public recently.
58.com says it’s not planning to monetize its Town app in the near term and is focusing on user penetration at this early stage. The firm earns the bulk of its revenues from advertising fees as well as subscriptions on Ganji and Anjuke, a property listing provider it acquired in 2015.
In a turn of events that reads like a plot point from an unreleased Coen Brothers script, information has surfaced revealing that prosecutors have charged embattled Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange.
The information came to light as part of the recently unsealed filing of a seemingly unrelated sex crimes case. How Assange’s name and fate appeared in those court documents is apparently anyone’s guess. Wikileaks, for one, is chalking the whole kerfuffle up to a “cut-and-paste error.”
The three-page filing itself dates back to August, originating from the court of the Eastern District of Virginia. It was unsealed the following month, but hadn’t received much attention until now, when George Washington University faculty member Seamus Hughes stumbled upon an odd passage in the filing.
“[D]ue to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case,” the filing reads, “no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”
You guys should read EDVA court filings more, cheaper than a Journal subscription pic.twitter.com/YULeeQphmd
Hughes suggested that the mention was a Freudian slip from someone who, “just appears to have Assange on the mind when filing motions to seal and used his name.” Ultimately, the truth of the matter seems much more unfortunate for Assange, who has been holed up in London’s Ecuadoran embassy.
“The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed,” Assange lawyer Barry Pollack told The New York Times. “The government bringing criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy to take.”
The charges could ultimately have additional cascading effects, impacting other major cases including Robert Mueller’s on-going investigation into the 2016 election.
Kenya’s Twiga Foods has raised $10 million from investors led by theInternational Finance Corporation to add processed food and fast moving consumer goods to its product line-up.
The startup has built a B2B platform to improve the supply chain from farmers to markets. Twiga Foods now aims to scale additional merchandise on its digital network that coordinates pricing, payment, quality control, and logistics across sellers and vendors.
CEO and co-founder Grant Brooke sees “a growth horizon…to build a B2B Amazon,” with produce as the base.
“If we can build a business around fresh fruit and vegetables, everything else after that is much simpler to add on,” he told TechCrunch.
“Fresh food and vegetables gives you clients that are ordering every two days, and now that’s paying for access to vendors and a proper way to be on every street,” said Brooke.
“It’s now much easier to lay things over that that would have been very expensive to get to end retailers.” In addition to the processed food FMCG it will add now, CEO Grant Brooke named household goods, such as light-bulbs that stock and sell in lower volumes than produce, as something the startup could include in the future.
The $10 million IFC led investment—co-led by TLcom Capital—comes in the form of convertible notes, available later as equity, according to Wale Ayeni, regional head of IFC’s Africa VC practice. As part of the deal, Ayeni will join Twiga Foods’ board.
Of the decision to fund the startup, Ayeni indicated IFC likes what the company’s already done in “figuring out a way to service a mass market with a digital platform focused on food in a sector that’s not really been touched,” he said. Another factor was Twiga’s prospects to create additional revenue by improving B2B supply chain for FMCG and other consumer products.
Co-founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Brooke and Kenyan Peter Njonjo, Twiga Foods serves around 2000 outlets a day with produce through a network of 13,000 farmers and 6000 vendors. Parties can coordinate goods exchanges via mobile app using M-Pesa mobile money for payment.
The company has reduced typical post-harvest losses in Kenya from 30 percent to 4 percent for produce brought to market on the Twiga network, according to Brooke.
“That’s savings we can offer the outlets and better pricing we can offer the farmers,” he said.
Twiga Foods generates revenues from margins on the products it buys and sells. As an example, the company could buy bananas at around 19 Schillings ($.19) a kilo and sell at 34 ($.34) Schillings a kilo.
“Our margin is how efficient we are at moving products between those two elements” and the company purchases from farmers at roughly 10 percent higher than Kenya’s traditional produce middle-men, according to Brooke.
Agtech has become a prominent startup sector in Africa. A number of companies, such as Ghana’s Agrocenta and Nigeria’s Farmcrowdy, have raised VC for apps that coordinate payments, logistics, and working capital across the continent’s farmers and food markets.
In 2017 Twiga Foods raised a $10.3 million Series A round lead by Wamda Capital. Earlier this year the startup partnered with IBM Africa to introduce a blockchain enabled finance working capital platform to its network of vendors.
With the new investment and product expansion, Twiga Foods will explore offering additional financial services to its client network. The startup doesn’t divulge revenue information but “profitability is on the horizon for us,” said Brooke.
Twiga Foods will maintain its focus primarily on Kenya, but “we’re starting to research and dabble in Tanzania,” according to Brooke.
The startup doesn’t plan to move beyond B2B to direct online retail. “I don’t think B2C e-commerce is viable on the continent once you factor in job size and cost of acquisition versus lifetime value,” said Brooke. He also named the high cost of marketing: “In B2C e-commerce space you really have to be in the advertising space. Our clients are ordering every two days with no marketing budget,” said Brooke.
So for the time being, Twiga Foods aims to stick with improving the supply chain for products between Kenya’s buyers and sellers.
This little peripheral is one of the more interesting new pieces of hardware floating around the halls of TC Tokyo this week. The product, created by local startup Brain Magic, is best described as a more feature-packed take on the Microsoft Dial — one that, as it happens, also works with Mac.
It’s a nice addition to the MacOS ecosystem, particularly given Apple’s recent re-focus on creative pros. The peripheral is targeted at videographers, illustrators and other artists, with a design that more closely resembles a gaming joystick than the Dial. Control is based on three primary actions: dial, toggle and button, allowing for a wide range of different controls.
All are created in the interested of expecting different actions and okey functions in creative applications like Adobe Creative Suite, Avid, Clip Studio Paint and MediBang Paint. There’s also blue glowing ring around the bottom, to help you better spot it in a dark room, while giving the controller a bit of a Tron vibe.
The build quality is nice. It feels comfortable in the hand and moves smoothly, augmented by haptic feedback. I could easily see the thing being implemented for some sort of gaming functionality. Unlike the Surface Dial, however, it’s not wireless, which means it’s a bit more of a pain to use it mounted atop a screen.
The Orbital 2 is a Kickstarter success story set to start shipping early next year, with an early bird price of ~$274.
A new dispatch from our ‘QR Codes Are Very Much Alive In Asia’ reporting program: Hong Kong’s subway system will soon allow its commuters to pay by scanning QR codes thanks to a deal with Alibaba that was announced this week.
The partnership — which is with Alibaba’s Ant Financial affiliate — will see scan-to-pay enabled at 91 MTR metro stations starting in mid-2020. Commuters will simply use Ant’s Alipay app to scan a code at the turnstile and then go on with their trip as usual. They’ll be able to top up their balance inside the app, as well as through traditional methods.
MTR also covers rail, buses and more but it isn’t clear if and when this payment option will be extended beyond subways.
Hong Kong already offers convenient cash-free payments using its Octopus card system, which has branched out from covering rides and can be used for purchases offline among many things. Octopus says that there are some 35 million active cards in circulation today — covering 99 percent of the seven million population — and the program is widely admired by other countries in Asia which are trying to replicate it.
There are said to be around 35 million Octopus cards in circulation in Hong Kong
The Alipay solution does also have its own merits, though. For one, QR code scans will work in places where internet connections are slow or inconsistent, plus the system could (should?) mean that visitors from Mainland China and other countries who already use Alipay can tap right into it.
For now, Alipay is best known in China — where it claims over 500 million users — but Ant Financial is aggressively building out its presence across Southeast Asia, Korea and other markets. It seems likely it’ll be keen to link those systems with this Hong Kong program.
There’s also likely to be a lot more beyond subway rides.
Ant Financial operates a joint venture — APSHK — in Hong Kong with telecom giant Hutchison which is aimed at bringing its tech and services to the city. It already covers offline payments and has support for taxis, but you can bet that, like Octopus, this MTR rollout will be a base to expand its services in Hong Kong to much broader areas, perhaps mirroring China where Alipay is a ‘swiss army knife’ app that goes well beyond payments.
“Not only is this a recognition in AlipayHK’s technological stability, we feel confident QR Code transit technology will be successfully expanded into more aspects. Aside from gradually merging with Hong Kong’s public transports, we will also be exploring smart mobility in outbound travels by entering the most popular travel destinations of Hong Kong people, driving smart mobility across Hong Kong,” said Jennifer Tan, CEO of APSHK.
So while there are sophisticated solutions for cash-less transportation like Apple Pay, which works on Tokyo’s public transport system, don’t discount more basic-looking options like QR codes.
The arms race to build the future of grocery stores is heating up in China. To no one’s surprise, the main contestants are the country’s ecommerce titans Alibaba and JD.com, which are turning offline for growth.
Online retail has flourished in China, but it still accounts for less than 20 percent of the nation’s overall consumption, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The goal of internet players is not to steal business from the offline counterparts, but to digitize old-fashioned merchants.
Entrance to 7Fresh, which stands for “fresh seven days a week” / Credit: TechCrunch
JD, of course, conjured up its own digital-first grocery store called 7Fresh. The supermarket opened this January and has since added three more locations, though JD’s founder and CEO Richard Liu had an ambition for 30 by the end of 2018. I recently visited one of them in Beijing and, as it turned out, it shares a lot of similarities with its opponent but also diverges in some aspects.
Unlike most supermarkets in China, the 7Fresh store I visited sits in a low-density community away from lively residential neighborhoods. You will need to drive or hail a taxi there, or do what JD.com wants you to — order online.
Upon arrival, you will immediately notice some of the Whole Foods rustic chic. An array of fruits, vegetables, fishes, meats, artisan bread, imported drinks lie graciously on wooden shelves, punctuated by 7Fresh’s dark green brand color.
Well, perhaps slightly more futuristic than its American counterpart.
The a-ha moment comes when you get to the fruit section, which lets you scan barcodes on meticulously wrapped items. Details of the fruit then pop up on a screen above your head, showing where it comes from, how sweet it is, and et cetera.
Scan to get details on your fruits. / Credit: TechCrunch
It says this particular pear I have comes from China’s northeastern Liaoning province, with a sugar level at 8 to 12 percent, and is recommended by 99 percent of the customers who bought and reviewed it on the 7Fresh app.
Yes, to shop at 7Fresh, you must download its app and register an account. Hema exercises the same mandate. The implication is that shoppers will help themselves at checkouts, although there is still human staff on hand to assist the less digital savvy. The drill won’t be new to most Chinese people as millions of them already shop online and pay offline with their smartphones every day.
When done with scanning products, you pay with JD’s digital wallet or the more popular WeChat Pay, the payment solution linked to Tencent, a major shareholder in JD.
Human staff assist the less digital savvy at self-checkouts. / Credit: TechCrunch
The 7Fresh app, of course, also lets you buy what’s in-store remotely. Customers who are less than three kilometers away can buy online with 30-minute delivery. In other words, the supermarkets are not stuck with store visit conversions.
“Customer conversions now take place anywhere within the three-kilometer range on people’s handsets. It’s all happening invisibly,” Zhao Heshan, a Shanghai-based farm produce supplier for several major Chinese ecommerce platforms, told TechCrunch.
Like Hema, 7Fresh doubles as a warehouse and distribution hub, and so is larger than the old-fashioned grocers, which focus on capturing in-store traffic.
The most forward-looking device in the store is arguably its ceiling conveyor belt – though it still requires human help. Once a customer places an order online, an in-store fulfillment staff packs it up in a bag and loads it onto the conveyor belt. The item then zooms across the store over your head to a nearby delivery center, a system that also powers Hema.
As such, Hema and 7Fresh are going after users online and trying to digitize those who used to shop at brick-and-mortars. As of September, online sales account for more than 60 percent for Hema stores that are 1.5 years or older, Alibaba says.
With the addition of physical footprints, ecommerce players gain a deeper understanding of how people shop and can thus optimize logistics efficiency.
“Consumers in different regions behave differently, so 7Fresh uses that as a foundation and customizes inventory at each store accordingly,” said president of 7Fresh Wang Xiaosong to press when the first store opened.
Jack Ma came up with the catchphrase “new retail” to describe this online-and-offline retailing integration, and Richard Liu’s equivalent is “borderless retail.”
Ceiling conveyor belt at Alibaba Hema. / Credit: Alibaba
Besides the much-coveted customer insights, Alibaba and JD are going offline for cheaper user acquisition. “The golden age of cheap internet traffic is gone. Now it’s the opposite. Customer acquisition is much cheaper offline,” suggested Zhao.
Both Alibaba and JD have continued their old playbooks at physical stores, with the former running a marketplace model that takes a cut from merchants, and the latter staying consistent with direct sales. That holds true to how the rivals handle deliveries. While Alibaba relies on a network of third-party logistics services, JD has its own in-house fleet, which could be costly to operate.
An offline push, however, could boost revenues for the online retailer. “Richard Liu often talks about feeding JD’s one million or so delivery staff. Growing online orders from 7Fresh could help him fulfill that promise,” Zhao observed.
For some who travels a lot, I can be downright reckless when it comes to packing sometimes. I’ve found myself hurling clothes, toiletries and assorted cables into bags on more early mornings than I care to mention.
That haphazard approach naturally extends to the bags I’m throwing my things into. I’ve always just relayed on my everyday backpack as a carry on. I mean, why not, right? It does the trick day to day, so there’s no reason it wouldn’t work on the road. Writing this piece backstage at the TC Tokyo event, however, I finally recognize the error of my ways.
Two weeks traveling around Asia for various work things was as good an excuse as any to get my stuff together when it comes to packing, and this gift guide was a good way to light a fire under my ass to actually do it. The whole thing started as a list of accessories — battery packs, plugs, cables and the like, but at a certain point it dawned on me that I would, you know, need a place to put them.
After a few hours of online research, I finally landed on the Never Check backpack. It’s right there in the name, really — and Timbuk2 makes a good bag. This much we know for certain.
A good travel backpack has to walk a delicate line — it needs to be small enough to be stashed in under the seat in front of you and expansive enough to fit all of the crap you need for a one-day trip: laptop, toiletries, clothes, running shoes. It’s a big ask for a little bag.
The Never Check performs the task better than any backpack I’ve owned to this point, courtesy, in part, of a zipper expandable main compartment. Unzip it and you give yourself an extra two inches of storage space. It’s a clever touch, similar to the compression packing cubes I also picked up for the trip.
The bag’s dimensions aren’t small, but they’re not overwhelming either. I could certainly see defaulting to it as an every day bag. It’s got deep backs and accessory holsters to spare, along with nice touches throughout, including a secret laptop pock and wax-covered zippers to keep out the rain.
The looks are nothing to write home about, really. It’s boxy and black, with bright blue lining inside — more utilitarian than flashy. It’s also more than I’ve traditionally paid for a backpack at $200. But it’s been a reliable companion for those 20 mile a day walks around Tokyo this week.
Sheryl Sandberg has denied that she obstructed early investigations into election meddling and claimed that she was unaware Facebook was involved with an agency that ran “abhorrent” anti-Semitic campaigns that targeted George Soros among others.
Facebook, the world’s largest social network with over 2.2 billion users, spent Thursday doing its best to fight a media relations forest fire that followed an explosive New York Times article revealing a campaign to smear George Soros and other revelations.
The company fired PR and research firm Definers, the center of some of the story, it disputed allegations that it tried to hide details around Russian hacking and it held an hour-long call with journalists and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Now Sandberg has joined Zuckerberg and Facebook itself in distancing herself from some of the core claims of the Times report, which paints her in a particularly poor light.
“On a number of issues – including spotting and understanding the Russian interference we saw in the 2016 election – Mark and I have said many times we were too slow,” she wrote in a rebuttal posted to Facebook. “But to suggest that we weren’t interested in knowing the truth, or we wanted to hide what we knew, or that we tried to prevent investigations, is simply untrue.”
Sandberg repeated a common refrain at Facebook: the company wasn’t aware of the scale of the attacks it received until it was too late and it is now committed to “investing heavily” to prevent recurrences.
“While we will always have more work to do, I believe we’ve started to see some of that work pay off, as we saw in the recent US midterms and elections around the world where we have found and taken down further attempts at interference,” she wrote.
But perhaps the most striking part of Sandberg’s is a brief passage in which she claims that she — Facebook’s chief operating officer — was unaware of the exact scope of Definers’ work for the company, which included disinformation campaigns against Apple, Google and the George Soros-backed Open Society Foundations.
From her post:
I also want to address the issue that has been raised about a PR firm, Definers. We’re no longer working with them but at the time, they were trying to show that some of the activity against us that appeared to be grassroots also had major organizations behind them. I did not know we hired them or about the work they were doing, but I should have. I have great respect for George Soros – and the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories against him are abhorrent.
Indeed, the claim that Sandberg didn’t even know the agency worked for Facebook flies in the face of the company’s original response, in which it wrote that its “relationship with Definers was well known by the media.”
According to those statements, the relationship was well known by the media but unknown to the company COO? Ok then.
The New York Times’ allegations are hugely serious, enough to get solicit fast and concerned responses from a multitude of politicians and prompt Facebook’s campaign PR machine to spluttered into frenzied activity – don’t expect this issue to disappear soon.
Here’s a quick recap of what you need to know so far.
I want to address some of the claims that have been made in the last 24 hours.
On a number of issues – including spotting and understanding the Russian interference we saw in the 2016 election – Mark and I have said many times we were too slow. But to suggest that we weren’t interested in knowing the truth, or we wanted to hide what we knew, or that we tried to prevent investigations, is simply untrue. The allegations saying I personally stood in the way are also just plain wrong. This was an investigation of a foreign actor trying to interfere in our election. Nothing could be more important to me or to Facebook.
As Mark and I both told Congress, leading up to Election Day in November 2016, we detected and dealt with several threats with ties to Russia and reported what we found to law enforcement. These were known traditional cyberattacks like hacking and malware. It was not until after the election that we became aware of the widespread misinformation campaigns run by the IRA. Once we were, we began investing heavily in more people and better technology to protect our platform. While we will always have more work to do, I believe we’ve started to see some of that work pay off, as we saw in the recent US midterms and elections around the world where we have found and taken down further attempts at interference.
I also want to address the issue that has been raised about a PR firm, Definers. We’re no longer working with them but at the time, they were trying to show that some of the activity against us that appeared to be grassroots also had major organizations behind them. I did not know we hired them or about the work they were doing, but I should have. I have great respect for George Soros – and the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories against him are abhorrent.
At Facebook, we are making the investments that we need to stamp out abuse in our system and ensure the good things people love about Facebook can keep happening. It won’t be easy. It will take time and will never be complete. This mission is critical and I am committed to seeing it through.
