Should Facebook Unfriend Mark Zuckerberg?
Facebook, our much-loved social-media platform, is facing declining popularity because of its numerous scandals in 2018. At this rate, the day is not far where it ceases to exist altogether. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook, began with a great idea, but he may now be at the limits of his abilities in order to keep Facebook going!
No, we don’t hate him or have any issues with him, but the fact is that Facebook has been jumping from scandal to scandal lately, the most recent being the revelation that Facebook shared access to users’ private messages to companies like Netflix and Spotify. This is a clear sign of inept leadership. The question becomes not whether he will quit as CEO and let other people handle his company, but if he does what is clearly right for the betterment of the company? The company has tremendous power through their collection of personal data of 2.2 billion users. The company says it is not violating a 2011 Federal Trade Commission consent decree saying that it cannot share data without permission but we believe otherwise.
For example, Orkut, a 13-year-old failed social network, failed due to a number of reasons like the arrival of Facebook and it couldn’t keep up with the fast pace with which its user base generated controversies around hate groups, state censorship, security and fake profiles leading to the shutting down of the social network. While a world without Facebook is hard to imagine, the same was the case with Myspace, Orkut, and more recently Yahoo. Anyway, the company is fortunate that its user base is shifting to Instagram, also owned by them.
Facebook’s troubles
Facebook was in huge trouble when founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Kriger, quit. As from our earlier article, Facebook has been in news for all the wrong reasons like data breaches and privacy issues among the users. These have been serious enough to warrant multiple lawsuits against them. Their stock prices have taken a battering, too.
A similar case happened when Whatsapp’s founders quit after being acquired by Facebook. They were not able to adjust with the Mark Zuckerberg’s style of functioning and ostensibly they had to quit.
What drives people to quit? That one question might have some answers which may put Mark’s prestige at stake. Whatever’s left of it, at least.
Facebook has also been censured for causing mass genocide in Myanmar, wherein nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims were forced to flee from the country’s Rakhine state to Bangladesh.
The company is actively trying to rebuild its public image by informing us about its public policies and standards, it is also trying to correct the damage it did by removing the Facebook accounts of Myanmar military leaders. Currently, it has removed 25 Facebook pages, 135 Facebook accounts, 17 Facebook groups and 15 Instagram accounts linked to the Myanmar military from its platform. “Approximately 2.5 million people followed at least one of these Facebook Pages,” the company wrote in a blog post adding that, “Approximately 1,300 people followed at least one these Instagram accounts”.
Facebook and privacy scandals are going hand in hand since the news came in March that Cambridge Analytica (a political consulting firm) improperly used Facebook’s data to build tools that aided in Trump’s presidency. Acknowledging the fact that it has broken people’s trust, stricter standards were proposed and Mark assured lawmakers that people have complete control over what they share on Facebook.
Facebook is in trouble
Earlier this year, we came to know that Facebook has a data sharing agreement with 60 tech companies including four Chinese firms- Huawei, Oppo, Lenovo and TCL, but a recent update added to this company’s woes.
According to an investigative The New York Times report, Facebook shares user data with companies like Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and Spotify. This special agreement allows Bing (by Microsoft) to see names of its users without taking any explicit consent from the users. It allowed Amazon (online marketplace) to get the user’s name and details form their friends and surprisingly allowed Spotify (music-streaming platform) and Netflix (video-streaming platform) to read personal messages of the users, despite giving a statement that they have stopped sharing these types of data.
If you are not alarmed by these levels of data infringement and privacy perversion, you may still in a state of denial. If you want to see the extent of how Facebook is meddling with the user’s private data, then consider the fact that Facebook not only allowed Netflix, Spotify and Royal Bank of Canada to see private messages of their users but also to write and delete them. Imagine waking up to see a text that you didn’t write, what can you do now? It’s already been sent. These are some horrors you wish to not face in life.
The New York Times report pointed towards the direction that the alliance is strategic and symbiotic. Facebook also enjoys the benefit of user data collected by these companies. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Facebook also purportedly allowed Apple to hide all the evidence that pointed in the direction of Apple’s devices asking for user’s personal data.
While Spotify, Netflix and Royal Bank of Canada denied having such wide data access, Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon stated that they use the data judiciously without getting into details.
Face the Books
Considering what’s done is done, we can only hope for it to get better. It shouldn’t be that hard for Mark Zuckerberg to understand as a CEO. It is said, “With great power comes great responsibility”, you simply can’t be sloppy with the power of data you have in your hands. While employees at Facebook created a tool to track the type of access their partners had, Facebook didn’t keep close tabs on how user data was used by them.
You are ‘the product’, offered by these companies like Facebook which trade in free online services and every advertisement and a company’s growth is based on the likes and clicks of a customer. While it is true that Facebook hasn’t sold users’ data, for years it has struck deals to share the information with dozens of Silicon Valley companies. These partners were given more intrusive access to user data that Facebook has ever disclosed. In turn, the deals helped Facebook bring in new users, encourage them to use the social network more often, and drive up advertising revenue, The New York Times report said.
According to the same report, the companies got much more access than Cambridge Analytica and Facebook never directly told its users that it was sharing this data. The regulators let it happen, despite strict laws Facebook was subject to.
Last week, a software bug affecting nearly 7 million users may have exposed a broader set of photos to app developers than what those users intended. This further adds to the point of Facebook being sloppy with the user’s data.
With a few more days left in 2018, we can’t still be sure that there won’t be another privacy-related revelation. While this year was hugely controversial for Facebook, and there has been a noticeable decrease in the growth rate. The company had to spend a lot of time, money and energy on privacy and security. The stock prices are in free fall. We can wish Mr Zuckerberg the best, though we can’t say that he is the best man to lead the hugely influential and controversial company. That said, things can only go up in 2019. Right?
