SAN FRANCISCO — At a question-and-answer session with employees last week, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, was asked about Frances Haugen, a former product manager turned whistle-blower who had testified to Congress about the company’s harms.
Mr. Zuckerberg spent about 20 minutes discussing the whistle-blower, her testimony and recent media coverage, all without mentioning Ms. Haugen by name, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. Some of her assertions on how the platform polarizes people, he told employees, were “pretty easy to debunk.”
The chief executive’s comments were part of an internal effort that Facebook has begun to manage the fallout from Ms. Haugen’s revelations. Even as Facebook executives have publicly questioned Ms. Haugen’s credibility and called her accusations untrue, they have been equally active with their internal positioning as they try to hang on to the good will of more than 63,000 workers and assuage their concerns about the whistle-blower.
To counter Ms. Haugen’s claims — which were backed by internal documents that showed Facebook’s services hurt some children’s self-esteem and abetted human trafficking — executives have conducted live internal events with employees, held emergency briefing sessions and sent numerous memos, according to some of the memos obtained by The Times and interviews with about a dozen current and former employees. Company officials have also provided information on how employees should respond when they are “asked questions about recent events by friends and family,” according to one memo.