Tech

'Facebook's got a big job cleaning it up': Former board member Donald Graham

Key Points
  • Former Facebook director Donald Graham expresses confidence in the the social media giant's leaders, but tells CNBC they have work ahead of them to fix the platform.
  • Criticism of Facebook renewed last week when The New York Times published an investigation that said the company's leaders knew about the spread of misinformation linked to Russia earlier than previously reported.
Former Facebook director on company's performance
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Former Facebook director on company's performance

Former Facebook director Donald Graham sees a lot of work ahead of the social media giant to clean up misinformation of the platform, but he expressed confidence in its leadership.

"Facebook's got a big job cleaning it up," the former Washington Post publisher and current Graham Holdings chairman said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday.

A New York Times investigation last week alleged that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operation Officer Sheryl Sandberg resisted efforts to investigate Russian activity on Facebook quickly enough.

Graham said he still believes in Zuckerberg and Sandberg to lead the company out of the past year's series of scandals. "I believe as strongly as I can in the two people working to fix it," he said.

When asked whether Facebook's advertising model is still right for the social media company, Graham said, "I don't see another model that remotely could build today's Facebook." He reaffirmed his confidence in the company by saying that unlike some of its tech peers, including Google and Amazon, "nobody needs to go on Facebook unless they find it enjoyable or useful."

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