A Verge report says Mark Zuckerberg has begun running Facebook like a company under siege, tightening control as the platform faced a string of damaging scandals in 2018.
The piece contrasts a “peacetime” chief executive with a “wartime” leader, arguing that Zuckerberg has increasingly adopted the latter posture as Facebook’s problems deepened.
According to the report, Zuckerberg gathered about 50 of his top lieutenants earlier in the year and told them Facebook was at war, adding that he intended to lead it that way.
The pressure on the company intensified after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Alex Jones controversy, and the Definers fake news episode, all of which pushed Facebook deeper into crisis.
The report also says Zuckerberg confronted chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg over the Cambridge Analytica fallout. It states that he blamed her and her teams for the public backlash tied to the research firm’s improper access to Facebook users’ private data for political research.
People familiar with the exchange told the publication that Sandberg later confided to friends that the conversation rattled her and left her wondering whether her job was at risk.
