On the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, Facebook Inc. showed off its War Room to reporters, a place within the company where certain employees would try to stamp out misinformation on the platform, among other nefarious activities.

According to a report by Bloomberg Monday, in spite of its promised usefulness in spotting misinformation before it went viral in the U.S. or other countries, the War Room has now been disbanded. Facebook had said in the past that it wasn’t permanent, but might be redeployed for future elections.

No sooner was the Bloomberg article published, however, than Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of product, tweeted something to the contrary. “The war room will be operational ahead of major events, and it still stands,” he said. “It was effective for our work in both the Brazil and U.S. elections which is why it’s going to be expanded, not disbanded.”

Given the tsunami of criticism that Facebook has been hit with of late, it would seem to be counterintuitive to scrap an idea that put the company in a positive light. Maintaining a room that fights the spread of lies might have been a good thing, seeing as lately Facebook itself has been under the gun for using perhaps underhanded tactics in trying to avoid bad publicity.

But in a statement to Mashable, a Facebook spokesperson doubled down on what Rosen had said, in that the room may have emptied for now, but that didn’t mean it was going anywhere.

“Our war room effort is focused specifically on elections-related issues and is designed to rapidly respond to threats such as voter suppression efforts and civic-related misinformation,” said the statement. “It was an effective effort during the recent U.S. and Brazil elections, and we are planning to expand the effort going forward for elections around the globe.”

The tainting of Facebook in the press is nothing new, with reports circulating for some time that overuse of the platform might not be good on the psyche, never mind how much erroneous news one might read and share.

Perhaps the criticism is now at an apex, or you might think that when reading articles in big media this week asking us if we have a moral obligation to shutter our Facebook accounts. Or, as some reports state, maybe Facebook needs to employ fewer platitudes about “connecting the world” and concentrate more on ethics.

Whatever the case, asking people not to use the platform is likely preaching to a choir that has no interest in singing that tune. User statistics show us that Facebook’s number of users keeps growing, hitting 2.27 billion monthly active users in the third quarter.

Image: Sole Treadmill