Zuckerberg stands firm amid questions about Facebook leadership

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he intends to remain head of the social media giant he founded in spite of calls for changes in management, local media reported on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg resisted calls for changes in top management and criticism of how Facebook has handled Russian interference on its platform.

He implied little is likely to change at the top of the company, answering “that’s not the plan” when asked whether he would consider stepping down.

He also threw his support behind chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who has been criticised for her role in handling Facebook’s recent crises, including the hiring of a public relations firm accused of using smear tactics.

Zuckerberg said he was proud of the work that he and Sandberg had done.

“I hope that we work together for decades more to come,’’ he stressed.

Zuckerberg’s defence of top managers at Facebook, which claims almost 1.5 billion daily active users worldwide, follows a New York Times investigation recently suggesting the company attempted to ignore and conceal Russian interference.

“It is not clear to me at all that the report is right.

“A lot of the things that were in that report, we talked to the reporters ahead of time.

“We told them that from everything that we’d seen that wasn’t true and they chose to print it anyway,’’ he said.

Facebook this year has struggled to put other crises, including the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and a massive security breach, behind it.

Its stock price has plummeted 40 per cent since July.