New Delhi: Facebook investors increased pressure over its Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chairman after reports about the company hiring a PR firm that smeared its critics as anti-Semites, a media report said. A report published recently in the New York Times revealed that Facebook at times ‘dug up dirt at its critics’ and termed them anti-Semitic or tried to link activists to billionaire investor George Soros and also tried to shift public anger away towards rival tech firms.

It also said that the company also used a Republican public relations firm named Definers Public Affairs to help repair its battered reputation following the recent worldwide criticism over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the way it handled a scandal over Russian interference in 2016 US elections.

A senior vice president at Trillium Asset Management, a US investor which owns an 8.5m stake in Facebook, Jonas Kron asked Zuckerberg to step down as board chairman and said that Facebook is behaving like it is “a special snowflake”, which it is not. It is a company and it needs to have a separation of chair and CEO.

The PR Company Definers reportedly encouraged dubbing the critics as anti- Semites and had published new articles criticizing the competitors.  The business has also been accused of attempting to encourage journalists to report that anti-Facebook groups were linked to the billionaire investor Soros.

Zuckerberg when questioned reportedly denied any knowledge about the firm and said that as soon as he learnt about it, he discontinued working with the firm.