Zach Gibson/Getty

Scoop: Facebook's internal Cambridge Analytica document

Moving the Market: Byers Market has obtained a long sought-after internal Facebook document that sheds light on when the social media giant first learned about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the violation of tens of millions of users' private data.

• The big picture: The document reveals that Facebook first learned about unconfirmed reports of a potential data violation in September 2015 and sought to address the issue but was not made aware of the full scope of the problem until a Guardian report was published in December 2015.

Why it matters:

• Mark Zuckerberg has testified that Facebook learned from The Guardian report that developer Aleksandr Kogan sold user data to Cambridge Analytica, a violation of Facebook's policy prohibiting researchers from selling or sharing data with third parties.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint in July stating that Facebook employees had "requested an investigation" into Cambridge's "possible 'scraping'" of data in September 2015, three months before the Guardian report was published.

• Facebook critics have cited the apparent disparity between Zuckerberg's testimony and the SEC complaint as evidence that Facebook executives either ignored the staffers' concerns or misled the public about what the company knew and when.

What the document shows: The document, a record of correspondence between Facebook employees, suggests both the SEC and Zuckerberg are right: Employees requested an investigation ⁠—and began an investigation ⁠— into "possible 'scraping'" in September. But they were not aware that Kogan had sold the data to Cambridge Analytica and violated Facebook policy until December 2015.

The timeline: The issue was brought to Facebook's attention on September 29, 2015, by a political partner who was curious about the parameters of Facebook's privacy policy. At the outset, one employee voiced concern that many of Facebook's political partners could be "on the edge" of the policy and "possibly over."

• Another employee responded: "I'm passing this to DevOps for initial review. They can help investigate. ... At a high level it is possible these services comply with our terms, but it is also possible they do not."

• The next day, September 30, an employee wrote: "I imagine it would be *very* difficult to engage in data-scraping activity as you described while still being compliant with [Facebook's privacy policy].

• But later that day, another employee wrote: "It's very likely these companies are not in violation of any of our terms."

• The debate continued, and by October 13 one employee stated that "there are likely a few data policy violations here."

• But a week later, on October 20, another employee wrote that while there appeared to be a data policy violation, "it is hard to understand specifically what they are violating without having a conversation" with the partners in question.

• From October 20 until the morning of December 11, the majority of correspondence pertained to employees' efforts to set up calls with the political partners, some of whom were "slow to respond."

• Then, on December 11 at 9:45 a.m., an employee wrote: "Can you expedite the review of Cambridge Analytica or let us know what the next steps are? Unfortunately, this firm is now a PR issue as this story is on the front page of the Guardian website."

• At 10:06 a.m., an employee wrote: "This is hi pri [high priority] at this this point ... We need to sort this out ASAP."

The Guardian story stated, among other things, that Kogan's private outfit, Global Science Research, had entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica's parent company to provide them with Facebook user data.

• At 10:11 a.m., after reading the Guardian report, an employee wrote: "Here's a link to Global Science Research, the "for profit" arm of [Cambridge Analytica] mentioned in the article. ... We had not heard of this org before the article."

Read the full document here.

Richard Bord/Getty

YouTube in Hong Kong mess

Big in the Bay: "YouTube said Thursday it had found and disabled 210 channels that were spreading disinformation about the anti-government protests in Hong Kong, at least the third such action by an American social media company since the street marches began months ago," my colleague David Ingram reports.

• "YouTube said its takedown was 'consistent' with the actions by Twitter and Facebook," which "said Monday they had removed a sweeping network of hundreds of troll accounts linked to China that aimed to fuel political discord in Hong Kong."

The big picture: Combatting coordinated influence operations has become "a higher priority for social media networks since they found that Russians ran 'influence operations' campaigns ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

🇺🇸 Talk of the Trail 🇺🇸

Lateral Moves: Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has joined Fox News as a contributor, the latest turn in the revolving door between 1600 Pennsylvania and 1211 Avenue of the Americas.

• The big picture: "Sanders is among nearly two dozen people who hold or have held positions both in the Trump administration and at Fox News," per NYT's Niraj Chokshi.

Meanwhile, Sean Spicer is headed to ABC's "Dancing With The Stars." Which is going about as well as you'd think.

Drew Angerer/Getty

Rupert Murdoch floats Knewz

Moving Midtown: Rupert Murdoch has launched a quixotic bid to take on Google News and other digital platforms with a news-aggregation service that rewards publishers by sharing data and giving them more advertising revenue.

• The big picture: Murdoch once called for Facebook and Google to subsidize the news business in exchange for the value publishers provide to those platforms. This would appear to be his Plan B.

Who Knewz? "The service, currently called Knewz.com, is expected to be a website and a mobile app," WSJ's Jeffrey Trachtenberg and Lillian Rizzo report.

• "The service will draw from hundreds of news sources, including national outlets... digital-native players, magazine publishers and local newspapers."

• "The articles on Knewz.com will link directly to publishers’ sites, and News Corp won’t take a cut of the advertising revenue the articles generate."

How it's playing: News of "Knewz" was somewhat ridiculed by members of the media on Thursday both because of the name and, far more importantly, because it seems highly unlikely that News Corp (or any old media brand) can beat the Silicon Valley giants at the news aggregation game.

• Also, per the WSJ report, "no specific timeline has been set" and "the company could still decide not to proceed with the project."

Bonus: The WSJ report states that NBC News is among the outlets that Knewz will draw its news from. Chris Berend, the EVP of digital for NBC News Group, tells me: "We have never heard of ‘Knewz’ and do not plan on participating in a platform with that name.”

Market Links

• Patrick Byrne resigns as Overstock CEO (WSJ)

• Dion Weisler steps down as chief of HP (CNBC)

• Brian Goldner buys Entertainment One (THR)

• Adam Mosseri charts new Insta-course (Information)

• Krishna Bharat returns to Google News (CNBC)

• Ann Sarnoff takes reins at Warner Bros. (Variety)

Gary Gershoff/Getty

Epstein, Graydon and 'the cat'

Stranger than fiction: The latest revelation about the late Jeffrey Epstein comes from NPR's David Folkenflik, who reports that the disgraced financier used extreme intimidation tactics "to try to soften news coverage and at times stave off journalistic scrutiny altogether."

His chief target: Graydon Cater.

• John Connolly, a former contributing editor at Vanity Fair, says that Epstein "beseeched" and "berated" then-editor-in-chief Carter both in person and in phone calls to stop his magazine from probing "Epstein's apparent interest in very young women."

• In March 2003, Vanity Fair published a profile of Epstein by Vicky Ward that had initially included accusations of sexual abuse, which were not included because, according to Carter, Ward did not have enough on-the-record sources.

• Nevertheless, Connolly says that "soon after publication... Carter called to share an ominous development: a bullet placed right outside his front door at his Manhattan home. ... Both Carter and he considered the bullet a clear warning from Epstein."

• In 2006, while Connolly was pursuing interviews with women who had worked for Epstein, "Carter called him once more. The editor had found another intrusion, this time in the front yard of his Connecticut home: the severed head of a dead cat."

But there's more: "Separate instructive episodes stretch from 2003 to 2018 and involve ... Vanity Fair, ABC News and The New York Times," Folkenflik writes. "Taken together, they may help illuminate Epstein's drive to avoid tough journalistic scrutiny and the media's reluctance to take the story on."

Read the whole report here.

🖼️ What's next: The weekend. If you're in L.A., Evan Spiegel is doing another one of his Snapchat artist collaborations, this time at LACMA with Christian Marclay.

See you Monday.