Facebook faces a reckoning

In pursuit of profit and the company mantra 'move fast and break things', it didn't care who was hurt in the process

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Facebook has 2.27 billion users, nearly one billion more people than there are in China. Perhaps that's why the company has consistently acted as though it was above government.

A New York Times investigation recently revealed how founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg leveraged lobbying might and personal clout to deflect responsibility from Facebook for the spread of inflammatory content amid allegations that Russians manipulated the 2016 US elections.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on November 20, 2018, with the headline Facebook faces a reckoning. Subscribe