(Vice News) Facebook has apologized for hiring Washington D.C. hit firm Definers Public Relations as part of a smear campaign against its critics in the wake of the Russia scandal.
In a statement published Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving — Facebook admitted that it asked Definers to explore potential connections between its critics and billionaire philanthropist George Soros. One of those critics is a group called Freedom From Facebook, founded in March by David Magerman, a philanthropist and technologist who lives in a suburb of Philadelphia.
Magerman founded the group after learning about how the political targeting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data from more than 50 millions of profiles and friend relationships to power right-wing political campaigns around the globe. Since then, Magerman has been advocating for Congress to break up the company.
