Facebook posts strange thread suggesting major revelations about to come out

Facebook said the plans to create more jobs in EU is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry (PA)

Facebook has posted an unusual thread to its Twitter account, suggesting that major revelations are on their way.

It did not give any indication of what was about to be revealed about the company. But it claimed that the reporting – whatever it is – “misrepresents our actions and motivations”.

The thread, and its attack on unnamed journalists, came after weeks of reports about the internal workings of Facebook. Relying on internal documents, reports suggested that Facebook was for instance aware of the damage its platforms were doing to young women.

It seemed to reference those reports when it said that “documents can be mischaracterised” and that it would be wrong to take Facebook’s official position from the discussions in those documents.

In the thread, Facebook seemed to suggest that would happen in whatever new reports were expected about the company. It appeared to indicate that the documents would include “suggestions” about changes at Facebook.

While Facebook’s team gave no information about what those suggestions might be, it did seem to indicate that the reports would include comments from individual staff members that had been shared as work in progress. It gave no detail about the content of the allegations that are due to be contained in the report at all, or any indication of when it expected the new revelations to arrive.

“We expect the press to hold us accountable, given our scale and role in the world. But when reporting misrepresents our actions and motivations, we believe we should correct the record,” Facebook said in the tweet thread, which was attributed to its vice president of communications, John Pinette.

“Over the last 6 weeks, including over the weekend, we’ve seen how documents can be mischaracterized. Obviously, not every employee at Facebook is an executive; not every opinion is the company’s position.

“Right now 30+ journalists are finishing up a coordinated series of articles based on thousands of pages of leaked documents. We hear that to get the docs, outlets had to agree to the conditions and a schedule laid down by the PR team that worked on earlier leaked docs.

“A curated selection out of millions of documents at Facebook can in no way be used to draw fair conclusions about us. Internally, we share work in progress and debate options. Not every suggestion stands up to the scrutiny we must apply to decisions affecting so many people.

“To those news organizations who would like to move beyond an orchestrated ‘gotcha’ campaign, we are ready to engage on the substance.”