FWIW, a NYT article undergoes many changes from the time it was originally posted to whatever its final state (usually, the next day, after the print edition). The story in question was just a few paragraphs when it was first posted, and then more details were added. You can use newsdiffs.org to see the various changes:
That said, if the explicit conflict between Stamos and Sandberg was a prominent detail, then many folks would argue that the NYT should have a clarification or editor's note explaining the change. However, it's worth noting that the reference to the conflict between Sandberg and Stamos is not omitted from the final edition.
Original:
> Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
Final:
> Mr. Stamos joined Facebook from Yahoo in June 2015. He and other Facebook executives, such as Ms. Sandberg, disagreed early on over how proactive the social network should be in policing its own platform, said the people briefed on the matter. In his statement, Mr. Stamos said his relationship with Ms. Sandberg was “productive.”
The latter reference seems to be just as damning to Sandberg when it comes to her complacency in policing the FB platform, though it doesn't say that her disagreement with Stamos was specifically about the Russia question.
You could still argue that this merits a clarification, i.e. A previous version of this story stated that Ms. Sandberg disagreed with Mr. Stamos in his advocacy for "investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook". However, Mr. Stamos said that he and Sandberg disagreed in general with how proactive Facebook should be in policing its own platform, but the two never specifically debated the issue with respect to revelations of Russian interference.
> Mr. Stamos would be the first high-ranking employee to leave Facebook since controversy over disinformation on its site. Company leaders — including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company.
Sandberg's name, and the inability to address growing problems "including Russian interference", are all in the same sentence. If Sandberg called in a favor for this, it was a pretty weak-ass favor. I don't think it matches the OP's assessment that Sandberg re: Russia was "wiped clean off the ether".
In fact, it seems the OP itself requires a correction, because it made the same mistake you did:
> Now, Sandberg’s name and the story’s only reference to her alleged role in frustrating Stamos’ attempts to highlight and root out Russian troll influence on the platform are gone because someone at the New York Times replaced the entire sentence.
Again, people can argue that maybe Sandberg asked NYT to move the reference to later in the story. But I mean, there's still the issue of why Sandberg would not pressure NYT to hold off on this story which is extremely damaging to FB as a whole.
Lobby for what? The OP has made no claim that he knows what Facebook PR talked to the the NYT reporters about. The NYT reporters have denied that PR asked them to change anything about Sandberg. The NYT reporter explicitly says that FB "made no such request" [0]
And FB PR hasn't commented either. The OP does not say he has inside sources that tell him otherwise. So what is that that is being asserted here? Because this is the only thing in the story:
> Perlroth, however, confirmed that the change occurred after Facebook’s public relations team reached out to the New York Times–some time after the story was published.
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/https%3A/www.nytimes.co...
Here is the specific diff where the Sandberg reference was changed:
http://newsdiffs.org/diff/1652560/1652801/https%3A/www.nytim...
That said, if the explicit conflict between Stamos and Sandberg was a prominent detail, then many folks would argue that the NYT should have a clarification or editor's note explaining the change. However, it's worth noting that the reference to the conflict between Sandberg and Stamos is not omitted from the final edition.
Original:
> Mr. Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
Final:
> Mr. Stamos joined Facebook from Yahoo in June 2015. He and other Facebook executives, such as Ms. Sandberg, disagreed early on over how proactive the social network should be in policing its own platform, said the people briefed on the matter. In his statement, Mr. Stamos said his relationship with Ms. Sandberg was “productive.”
The latter reference seems to be just as damning to Sandberg when it comes to her complacency in policing the FB platform, though it doesn't say that her disagreement with Stamos was specifically about the Russia question.
You could still argue that this merits a clarification, i.e. A previous version of this story stated that Ms. Sandberg disagreed with Mr. Stamos in his advocacy for "investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook". However, Mr. Stamos said that he and Sandberg disagreed in general with how proactive Facebook should be in policing its own platform, but the two never specifically debated the issue with respect to revelations of Russian interference.