Facebook, Opposition Research, and Definers

At The New York Times, Sheera Frankel et al. explain how Facebook managed bad publicity about privacy.

In October 2017, Facebook also expanded its work with a Washington-based consultant, Definers Public Affairs, that had originally been hired to monitor press coverage of the company. Founded by veterans of Republican presidential politics, Definers specialized in applying political campaign tactics to corporate public relations — an approach long employed in Washington by big telecommunications firms and activist hedge fund managers, but less common in tech.

Definers had established a Silicon Valley outpost earlier that year, led by Tim Miller, a former spokesman for Jeb Bush who preached the virtues of campaign-style opposition research. For tech firms, he argued in one interview, a goal should be to “have positive content pushed out about your company and negative content that’s being pushed out about your competitor.”
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On a conservative news site called the NTK Network, dozens of articles blasted Google and Apple for unsavory business practices. One story called Mr. Cook hypocritical for chiding Facebook over privacy, noting that Apple also collects reams of data from users. Another played down the impact of the Russians’ use of Facebook.

The rash of news coverage was no accident: NTK is an affiliate of Definers, sharing offices and staff with the public relations firm in Arlington, Va. Many NTK Network stories are written by staff members at Definers or America Rising, the company’s political opposition-research arm, to attack their clients’ enemies. While the NTK Network does not have a large audience of its own, its content is frequently picked up by popular conservative outlets, including Breitbart.

Mr. Miller acknowledged that Facebook and Apple do not directly compete. Definers’ work on Apple is funded by a third technology company, he said, but Facebook has pushed back against Apple because Mr. Cook’s criticism upset Facebook.

If the privacy issue comes up, Facebook is happy to “muddy the waters,” Mr. Miller said over drinks at an Oakland, Calif., bar last month.

On Thursday, after this article was published, Facebook said that it had ended its relationship with Definers, without citing a reason.

More on Definers here. 

Theodoric Meyer has an update at Politico:

DEFINERS RESPONDS: Definers Public Affairs has come in for heavy criticism since The New York Times published a report on Facebook’s efforts to handle the fallout from its role in the 2016 election, which prompted Facebook to break with the firm. Definers responded in a statement posted on its website this morning. “Definers’ main services for Facebook were basic media monitoring and public relations around public policy issues facing the company,” the statement reads. “We ran a large-scale news alert service keeping hundreds of Facebook staff informed on news stories about the company and its policy challenges.” It also notes that Definers’ work for Facebook, which Facebook’s chairman and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has claimed he knew nothing about, wasn’t exactly a secret: “Our hiring was public, and first reported by Axiosin October 2017.”