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Facebook Hired the Wrong Crisis PR Firm

By George Khoury, Esq. on November 19, 2018 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Monetizing the internet is big business. Even sites that no one expected to become central to millions of peoples' lives have done just that, without users having to pay any money. And while, for years, people wondered how these sites stayed in business, the scales dropped from the public's eyes pretty recently.

The internet-age saying that goes, if you're not paying, you're the product, has become a near universal truth. And for Facebook users, this is becoming painfully clear as the company seems to be facing scandal after scandal. Most recently, a public relations crisis consulting company that was retained by Facebook ended up being the cause of a PR crisis.

Opposition Research Looks Bad

While normally you'd expect a public relations crisis consultant to help avoid crises from arising, the one Facebook hired is more geared towards creating crises for competitors to deflect attention. Although opposition research seems to be the new normal these days, the hired firm stands alleged of creating news stories with targeted attacks to deflect attention away from Facebook, and towards its critics. Additionally, the fact that both the CEO and COO claim to know nothing about the firm's hiring is frightening, whether believed or not.

If you believe chief officers, then you have to wonder just what in the world is going on over at Facebook. If you don't, then you might want to consider being part of the #DeleteFacebook movement which has been going strong for some time as the company keeps giving its users reasons to quit it.

In response to the claims of what their PR crisis firm was doing, Zuckerberg called it "typical D.C." However, curiously, it is the same sort of conduct that Facebook is policing on its own site, and for some, currently unknown, reason, Facebook hired them despite the group's reputation for doing exactly what it did for Facebook: drag their opponents through the mud.

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