Facebook Gives Workers a Chatbot to Appease That Prying Uncle

The answers were put together by Facebook's public relations department, parroting what company executives have publicly said. And the chatbot has a name: the "Liam Bot." (The provenance of the name is unclear.) "Our employees regularly ask for information to use with friends and family on topics that have been in the news, especially around the holidays," a Facebook spokeswoman said. "We put this into a chatbot, which we began testing this spring." Facebook's reputation has been shredded by a string of scandals -- including how the site spreads disinformation and can be used to meddle in elections -- in recent years.