On Russia, Facebook Sends a Message It Wishes It Hadn’t

Rob Goldman, Facebook’s vice president of advertising, posted a series of messages on Twitter that were meant to clear up misconceptions about Facebook’s role in the election. Instead, he plunged the company deeper into controversy. “Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election,” Goldman tweeted. “I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal.” He continued, “The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election. We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn’t align with the main media narrative of Tump [sic] and the election.” Goldman was tweeting only for himself, but his comments, which drew praise from other Facebook executives on Twitter, were an unusually candid statement that flouted Facebook’s well-sculpted messaging strategy, which has generally been to stay as far away from partisan debates as possible. Goldman eventually walked back some of his statements, but it was too late. He had just given President Donald Trump something that looked like a Facebook-stamped exoneration. Now, Facebook is in the uncomfortable position of reining in an off-message executive, while clarifying that it didn’t mean to bolster the president’s position.