Facebook investors want Zuckerberg to step down for smearing company’s critics

Washington: Facebook investors have called on Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chairman following reports that the company hired a public relations firm to smear its critics, a media report said on Saturday.

The New York Times published a report revealing that Facebook at times smeared critics as anti-Semitic or tried to link activists to billionaire investor George Soros, and tried to shift public anger away toward rival tech firms.

It also said that the company also used a Republican public relations firm to help repair its battered reputation following intense criticism of the social media platform’s handling of a scandal over Russian interference in the 2016 US elections and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, The Telegraph reported.

Jonas Kron a US investor which owns an 8.5m stake in Facebook, last night called on Zuckerberg to step down as board chairman in the wake of the report, the paper said.

The paper quoted him as saying, “Facebook is behaving like it’s a special snowflake.”

He said, “It’s not. It is a company and companies need to have a separation of chair and CEO.”

The business has also been accused of attempting to encourage journalists to report that anti-Facebook groups were linked to Mr Soros, the paper said.

In a call with journalists earlier, Zuckerberg denied knowing that his business had hired the firm.

Zuckerberg has retained a high level of control over the social networking business which he founded in 2004 due to his combined role and his ownership of a stake representing 60pc of the company’s voting shares, the report said.