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《纽约时报》的调查给马克·扎克伯格的二把手施加压力。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
preternaturally 不可思议地
desensitize[ˌdi:ˈsensətaɪz] vt.退敏
阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。
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On Wednesday morning, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s longtime second-in-command, posted her thanks to “everyone who uses Facebook to make the world a better, kinder, more compassionate place”.
Congratulating users on raising a total of $1bn for charities using the site, her message was clear: she still believes Facebook to be a force for good.
But by that afternoon, Ms Sandberg had been thrown into yet another crisis ignited by the people using Facebook to make the world a toxic and more divided place.
A New York Times investigation catalogued the social media group’s failures as it bungled its response to Russian interference on the platform — and painted a picture of Ms Sandberg as more interested in protecting her company than the country’s interests.
Ms Sandberg was angry when she discovered that Facebook’s security team, led by Alex Stamos, had been probing Russian disinformation operations on the social network, without permission — fearing it left the company legally exposed, the New York Times reported.
Later, when Mr Stamos told the board far more than she expected, she allegedly shouted at him in front of everyone: “You threw us under the bus!”
You have two leaders of a company desensitised to all the problems they were creating in the world
Former Facebook executive
The revelations put more pressure on Ms Sandberg’s position at Facebook. David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, said Ms Sandberg was not serving the company or its shareholders well for the long term. “Her legacy is going to be her inaction in solving the problems in fake news, the undermining of democracy, the failure to control hate speech,” he said.
Ms Sandberg created the self-serve advertising system that sucked up user data, allowed detailed targeting, and asked few questions about who was placing adverts. Mr Kirkpatrick said this “insufficient governance” meant it had spun out of control. “The world is paying the price,” he said.
Until the presidential election in 2016, Ms Sandberg was celebrated for her political antennae. She knew Washington DC: she worked for five years for Larry Summers at the US Treasury. She was tipped for a senior post in a Clinton administration. Preternaturally composed, she always delivers a prepared answer in a reassuring tone. But the antennae have since snapped.
Ms Sandberg was in charge of policy and communications when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said it was “pretty crazy” that fake news on the site influenced the election.
She was in charge when Facebook’s senior leaders kept quiet for five days after the revelation of the massive data leak to Cambridge Analytica.
And she was in charge when Facebook hired Definers, a Republican-leaning consultancy firm the New York Times accused of smearing competitors and George Soros, claiming the billionaire investor philanthropist was behind anti-Facebook protests.
Ms Sandberg denies knowing that Facebook even hired Definers — and Facebook cancelled its contract with the company this week.
She denies any accusation of blocking an investigation into Russian interference. Her next Facebook post, on Thursday night, said those allegations were “just plain wrong”.
“To suggest that we weren’t interested in knowing the truth, or we wanted to hide what we knew, or that we tried to prevent investigations, is simply untrue,” she wrote. Mr Stamos, who has left the company, backed her up, tweeting that neither she, nor Mr Zuckerberg, or any other Facebook executive told him not to investigate.
In many other companies, Ms Sandberg might have been seen as a suitable sacrificial head.
But she maintains a close relationship with Mr Zuckerberg, the chairman, chief executive and controlling shareholder, who has relied on her to build Facebook into the moneymaking machine it is today. Ms Sandberg, now 49, was brought in more than 10 years ago as “adult supervision” to the young entrepreneur, who while he has grown into his own skin, still prefers to talk in technical fixes. Mr Zuckerberg, 34, said this week that she has been a “great partner and will continue to be”.
One former Facebook executive said Ms Sandberg was smart and worked hard but had kept herself in a “protective bubble”, surrounded by confidants known within the company as “FOSS — Friends of Sheryl Sandberg”.
Ms Sandberg has got more “robotic” over time, while Mr Zuckerberg “never really had any empathy”.
“You have two leaders of a company desensitised to all the problems they were creating in the world,” he said.
What some might see as a lack of empathy, Ms Sandberg might see as a naive optimism. She has said she thinks Facebook did not focus enough on “the bad”. “When you have humanity on a platform, you get the beauty and you get the ugliness,” she said at the Code conference in May.
But with Mr Zuckerberg on side, it is only the board or Wall Street who could try to push her out. The board issued a rare statement this week, calling the report “grossly unfair” and backing the leaders’ investments in security on the platform.
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
A. She wants to demonstrate Facebook's vast monetization power.
B. She wants people to pay attention to her own charity.
C. She wants people to know that she has faith in Facebook.
D. She wants to show that she's actually the first-in-command in Facebook.
答案 (1)
A. Sandberg is the source of all fake news.
B. Sandberg is better than Zuckerberg as a manager.
C. Sandberg has nothing to do with all the problems facing Facebook.
D. Sandberg prioritizes Facebook over the United States.
答案 (2)
A. Sandberg just does what Zuckerberg tells her to do.
B. Sandberg's energy level is so low that she behaves like a robot.
C. Sandberg just repeats herself like a robot.
D. Sandberg doesn't understand the problems caused by Facebook.
答案 (3)
A. Supportive
B. Sarcastic
C. Fearful
D. Indifferent
答案 (4)
(1) 答案：C解释：Congratulating users on raising a total of $1bn for charities using the site, her message was clear: she still believes Facebook to be a force for good.
(2) 答案：D解释：A New York Times investigation catalogued the social media group’s failures as it bungled its response to Russian interference on the platform — and painted a picture of Ms Sandberg as more interested in protecting her company than the country’s interests.
(3) 答案：D解释：“You have two leaders of a company desensitised to all the problems they were creating in the world,” he said.
(4) 答案：A解释：But she maintains a close relationship with Mr Zuckerberg, the chairman, chief executive and controlling shareholder, who has relied on her to build Facebook into the moneymaking machine it is today.