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Facebook founder Zuckerberg ‘maybe’ phonebanking for ballot foe of his ex-privacy officer, Chris Kelly

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Is Mark Zuckerberg going to make phone calls today on behalf of California attorney general candidate Kamala Harris, the opponent of his former chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly?

‘Maybe.’

That’s how the Facebook founder registered on a campaign Facebook page advertising a phonebanking effort for Harris that will take place Sunday.

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With the election two days away, Kelly has found himself on the defensive about his role in the current digital privacy controversy going on at Facebook. After being attacked by the Harris campaign for ‘designing the Facebook privacy policy condemned across the country,’ (an assertion his campaign vehemently denied), Kelly publicly criticized Facebook’s privacy stance, calling some elements of it ‘troubling.’

Given the timing (Kelly made his criticism on Thursday), it’s fair to ask if Zuckerberg’s interest in making calls on behalf of Kelly’s opponent is a result of friction between Kelly and Facebook.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Or maybe Zuckerberg was just being nice. It so happens that Harris’ niece-slash-campaign-organizer, Meena, is a former Facebook employee. She’s also a Facebook friend of Zuckerberg -- maybe he saw the event in his news feed and decided he might want to pitch in.

Updated, 2:31 p.m.: Upon further reflection, Zuckerberg has changed his reply to ‘Not attending.’

-- David Sarno

twitter.com/dsarno

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