A campaign group advocating the break-up of Facebook has subverted the social network's advertising tools to tempt its employees into leaking information.
Freedom from Facebook says it targeted ads at the technology company's staff, promoting a "safe space" website where they can anonymously submit "whistleblower tips". Facebook declined to comment. But the BBC understands it is not blocking the ads nor keeping a special log of who has viewed them. The stunt comes a week after the New York Times revealed that a public-relations company used by Facebook had circulated claims that the controversial billionaire George Soros was the hidden backer of the Freedom from Facebook campaign.
Mr Soros's Open Society Foundations subsequently accused Facebook of conducting a "smear campaign". Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, have since said they were unaware of the effort and have ended their contract with Definers, the PR company involved. However, a leaked internal memo from Facebook's departing communications chief, Elliot Schrage, has since acknowledged he was responsible. "When the 'Freedom from Facebook' campaign emerged as a so-called grassroots coalition, [our communications] team asked Definers to help understand the groups behind them," the memo -
made public by the Techcrunch news site - states. "They learned that George Soros was funding several of the coalition members. They prepared documents and distributed these to the press to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement. "Responsibility for these decisions rests with leadership of the communications team. That's me."
Mr Schrage's duties are being taken on by the UK's former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who has been charged with carrying out a wider review of Facebook's lobbying efforts. On Tuesday, Mr Zuckerberg gave an interview to CNN in which he said
he did not see the need to step down from being chairman and hoped that he would work together with Ms Sandberg for "decades more to come".
