Facebook Inc. created a bot called “Liam” to help employees better deflect criticism, the New York Times reported Monday.

According to that report, the bot was introduced for the holiday period when staff might return home and have to answer difficult questions coming from friends and family.

The social network has been embroiled in multiple issues for the last few years, from privacy breaches to hate speech circulating on the platform. It seems Liam was there to help employees find the right answer when those topics and others came up.

The Times wrote that if an employee was asked how Facebook treats hate speech, Liam would provide a few responses. Some of those were “Facebook consults with experts on the matter” and “It has hired more moderators to police its content.”

Liam could also pull up statistics from a report relating to hate speech and moderation. When it comes to other issues relating the scandals Facebook has been involved in, Liam might find press releases on the matter. For less serious questions pertaining to practical advice for Facebook users, such as resetting a password, Liam could offer guidance.

The responses were created by Facebook’s public relations department. “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 told the Times. “We put this into a chatbot, which we began testing this spring.”

Some reports suggest that because of all the scandals, whether it was the Cambridge Analytica privacy mess, or the more recent decision to allow politicians to lie on the platform, Facebook has been finding it more difficult to recruit staff.

The company used to be the top place where people wanted to work in tech, but it seems that has changed. Perhaps having to respond to difficult questions regarding scandals proved too much for some employees, with former employees late in 2018 reporting that they were getting calls from current employees about how they might leave.

Photo: Anthony Quintano/Flickr