IMO Facebook got caught up in the media Trump hysteria over the "hacked elections" narrative and at that point they were SOL. PR in that context is ineffective,

IMO Facebook got caught up in the media Trump hysteria over the "hacked elections" narrative and at that point they were SOL. PR in that context is ineffective, because Facebook's message would be going against deep-set beliefs of the authors and convincing them otherwise would obviously introduce cognitive dissonance. (ie if the only way you can comprehend reality is that the elections were manipulated, then facebook must be culpable in this malfeasance). Scott Adams has a bunch of articles on how cognitive dissonance tends to impact judgement. That's honestly my best take on the situation, otherwise it's rather difficult to explain articles like the one below, that talks about the very same facebook issue with a completely opposite bias: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...