Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has reportedly split with her billionaire beau as the social media giant continues to come under fire following a string of scandals.
Sandberg, 49, called it quits with Activation Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, 56, after three years together.
The couple had begun dating in 2016, a year after Sandberg’s husband Dave Goldberg died in a freak treadmill accident while on vacation.
A source close to Sandberg and Kotick said the pair are ‘very different people’.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has reportedly split with her billionaire beau Bobby Kotick as the social media giant continues to come under fire following a string of scandals
Sandberg, 49, called it quits with the Activation Blizzard CEO after three years together
‘She’s a left-wing Democrat who takes herself very seriously. He’s a right-wing Republican who, if he wasn’t a very, very successful businessman, he’d probably be a stand-up comedian,’ the source told Page Six.
The source said that while Sandberg prefers to spend her weekends with her two children helping in a soup kitchen, Kotick ‘likes flying helicopters’.
‘Understandably, she is fully devoted to her children and work at the moment,’ they added. ‘Sheryl is under a huge amount of work stress right now.’
Sandberg defended her relationship with Kotick in 2017, saying there was a double standard when it came to how quickly widows or widowers get back to dating.
‘Men date sooner, men date more, and women get judged more,’ she told the Guardian. ‘And, you know, obviously that’s super unfair.’
A source close to Sandberg and Kotick said the pair are ‘very different people’, noting that she’s a ‘left-wing Democrat’ while he’s a ‘right-wing Republican’
‘I think I’m helping people remember that dating, for those who want to do it, is part of moving forward. If I could I would only date Dave. I just had that taken away from me.’
Once lauded for her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sandberg has spent the last year on a very different kind of publicity tour.
The COO has been working overtime to try and help rehabilitate Facebook’s image following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and Russia’s use of the social media site in its 2016 election misinformation campaign.
Sandberg reportedly began spending ‘more time safeguarding the company’ following criticism from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The couple had begun dating in 2016, a year after Sandberg’s husband Dave Goldberg (pictured together) died in a freak treadmill accident while on vacation
Just last month she appeared on CBS This Morning to reveal that Facebook is partnering with the FBI and Homeland Security to combat any attempts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.
Sandberg did not actually detail what Facebook, the FBI, or Homeland Security was doing to combat this issue, but did seem to suggest that those federal agencies were somehow to blame in part for Facebook’s influx of Russian interlopers during the 2016 election by noting ‘both of them are working on this in a way they never have before.’
Sandberg, in a very sincere tone, then stated: ‘And we’re all working together to protect. So I guess what I want you to know is…’
That is when a visibly annoyed Gayle King shut down Sandberg, interrupting her diatribe to declare: ‘In less than ten seconds, Sheryl.’
The COO has also been working overtime to try and help rehabilitate Facebook’s image following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and Russia’s use of the social media site’s platform in its 2016 election misinformation campaign
Just last month Sandberg appeared on CBS This Morning to reveal that Facebook is partnering with the FBI and Homeland Security to combat any attempts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election
Sandberg had been spinning her way around questions about Facebook for almost five minutes when she got that 10-second warning from King.
The interview came just one month after the man who killed 50 people in two New Zealand mosques was able to livestream the massacre on the social media site.
First up was a question about Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes’ recent call for Facebook to be broken up, in an editorial where he described the behemoth as ‘a monopoly that crowds out entrepreneurship and restricts consumer choice’.
Sandberg offered up a few vague and hollow remarks in response to that searing and specific statement from Hughes, saying: ‘We’re fundamentally changing how we run the company. We have massive teams in place whose whole job is to protect people’s privacy, protect elections, go through our systems and find things.’
King then tried to get an actual answer out of Sandberg by interjecting: ‘Yet it still keeps happening Sheryl. We know that Facebook has taken its knocks…but some people say it really hasn’t changed.’
She then pointed out that when Hughes was on the program earlier in the week he said that Facebook was not just too big to fail, but too big to even care.
Given another very specific statement and criticism of the company, Sandberg paused for a moment, smiled, and once again started to spin.
‘We made a commitment,’ she said. ‘Mark and I have said we’re going to do everything it takes to fix these systems, and we believe we can do that.’
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