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Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg Says Peter Thiel Has 'Strong Views' And Did Not Act On Behalf Of Board

This article is more than 7 years old.

One of Silicon Valley's best-known investors, Peter Thiel, will remain on Facebook's board of directors despite his controversial backing of Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against online news outlet Gawker Media.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Recode cofounder Kara Swisher that Thiel, Facebook's longest serving board member after CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will retain his board seat in an interview at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. on Wednesday.

"Peter did what he did on his own, not as a Facebook board member," Sandberg said. "We didn't know about it. We have very independent board members with very independent thoughts that they share publicly."

"Those strong people make really good board members because they have strong views, and they’re not afraid to think differently than other people, which has served Facebook well," she added.

Sandberg said Facebook publicly commented on investor Marc Andreessen's widely criticized comment about India blocking its free internet services because it seemed as though  Andreessen was speaking as a Facebook board member. Andreessen's tweet suggested that Indian authorities were wrong to block Facebook's Internet service and that the country would be better off if the British were still in control.

"There has been no implication he [Thiel] was doing this for Facebook, so we stayed out of it," Sandberg said, comparing the two occurrences. "We didn’t have to comment."

When asked by reporter Josh Topolsky in an open question-and-answer session about how Facebook would respond if Thiel was systematically challenging publishers, Sandberg said: "It’s really hard to answer all of these hypotheticals, but what really matters, is Gawker is getting distribution from us as is the New York Times, as is Fox News, as is Recode."

Swisher also asked Sandberg and Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer, who was also on stage, about the outcome of the company’s meeting with conservative leaders about the display of "Trending Topics" article links.

"They really wanted to understand how Facebook works, how the algorithm works, how the trending topic editorial team works," Sandberg said. "And they wrote this, that they said that they found Mark, and all of us, really open to the dialogue.”

"We want the continuing dialogue on what we think makes the platform work for them," she added, noting that the political figures at the meeting were highly interested in discussing how to best promote their ideas on the platform. "People believe Silicon Valley has a liberal bias, so we understood the concern."

The Facebook executives emphasized that content users see on Facebook is largely driven by the individual user.

"Trending topics is a small corner of the website," Schroepfer said, noting that much more content is consumed within the news feed. "On Facebook, so much is dominated by who you friend and what you like.”

He noted that Facebook quickly investigated the allegations made in a Gizmodo story that the "Trending" team was suppressing conservative view points, but did not find evidence of systemic bias. Despite this, the company still decided to make its policies toward sharing content more transparent.

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