A multi-billion dollar stock drop.
Whistleblowers.
A failed attempt at rebranding.
These are just a few of the reasons why we're worried about Facebook's embattled co-founder
Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook is no stranger to data and privacy issues.
Over the years, the social media platform has had its fair share of data breaches, which
affected millions of users and compromised personal information.
Of the many leaks Facebook has accrued since its debut in 2004, the data breach of March
2019 was a significant one.
According to Forbes, between 200 million and 600 million users of Facebook, Facebook Lite,
and Instagram had their passwords exposed and subsequently stored in its internal storage
system.
The only issue?
They were not encrypted, which left the passwords of millions of users vulnerable to being seen
by Facebook employees.
Shortly after, Facebook engineer Pedro Canahuati issued a statement to address the breach,
noting that the encryption issue had been fixed.
In a company blog post, he wrote,
"To be clear, these passwords were never visible to anyone outside of Facebook and we have
found no evidence to date that anyone internally abused or improperly accessed them."
Two years later, the platform was under fire for another data breach, affecting approximately
530 million people.
In April 2021, a hacker gained access to the personal information of Facebook users, including
phone numbers, email addresses, and even locations.
The social media giant had a different approach to this issue, however, and decided against
alerting consumers to the compromised data.
By the time of the presidential election in 2016, the United States was growing increasingly
polarized.
"It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in
charge of the law in our country."
"Because you'd be in jail."
As presidential nominee campaigns were ongoing at the time, internet outlets and social media
platforms both played a large role in relaying information to the public, regardless of how
truthful it was.
A study conducted by Princeton and the University of Exeter came to some alarming conclusions.
The study stated:
"Facebook played an important role in directing people to untrustworthy websites.
Heavy Facebook users were differentially likely to consume information from these sites, which
was often immediately preceded by a visit to Facebook."
Due to Facebook's algorithm, trending stories — including fake news pieces — circulated
through the news feeds of millions of users and spread to many on both sides of the political
spectrum.
Because of this, misinformation spread at an alarming rate.
An analysis by Buzzfeed suggested that during this critical moment in the election cycle,
related stories from hard news outlets such as The New York Times or The Washington Post
had received significantly less engagement than the same amount of stories from hoax
websites and hyperpartisan blogs.
The strong presence of fake news stories, and Facebook's lack of action to filter false
information, drew outrage from many.
It also led to a public and arguably disastrous senate committee hearing in 2018, in which
Mark Zuckerberg would have to account for Facebook's many mistakes.
As presidential campaigning was in full force in 2015, politicians were taking different
avenues to convey information to their target audiences and win over the approval of desired
demographics.
Donald Trump's campaign team was one such group that hired Cambridge Analytica to collect
data from millions of users with which to deliver targeted ads.
On the surface, the process may seem innocent enough.
However, in March 2018, former employee and whistleblower Christopher Wylie alleged that
the firm collected the data of 87 million users through a quiz, "This is My Digital
Life."
This quiz not only exposed the data of the primary user but also the data of the user's
Facebook friends.
The social media platform had consistently pledged the importance of user safety and
privacy and had apparently fallen short of it.
However, while Facebook had prohibited the sales of data harvested in this way, the political
data firm had cashed it in, regardless.
The Cambridge Analytica Scandal was majorly important because of its implications on both
data privacy and the democratic process.
Zuckerberg responded to the scandal, but he did not apologize for his shortcomings.
In a lengthy Facebook post, he wrote,
"I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't
happen again.
The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today
we have already taken years ago."
The Cambridge Analytica Scandal drew significant negative attention to the already weakened
reputation of both Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.
In April 2018, the mogul was called to testify for the US Senate Judiciary Committee in response
to the scandal.
His testimony, which spanned 2 days and 600 questions from Congress, centered around privacy
and data protection on Facebook as well as other issues such as misinformation and hate
speech.
Zuckerberg faced intense questioning during the hearing, which put the spotlight on the
Facebook CEO to take accountability for the company's many faults.
He defended his position several times but acknowledged that as the head of the platform,
he is responsible for each and every issue that occurs within it.
When discussing the matter of how user data was exposed, Zuckerberg testified,
"It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm.
That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as
developers and data privacy."
"We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a mistake.
And it was my mistake.
And I'm sorry."
Reactions to Zuckerberg's testimony varied — possibly because the hearing itself became
disastrously humorous at points.
Critics of how the hearing was handled noted the lack of technological literacy and understanding
of many older Congress members, while others highlighted the Facebook CEO's avoidance of
more pressing questions.
"Senator, no.
I probably would not choose to do that publicly here."
Despite the intention of clearing up his position on certain tech-related matters and taking
accountability for Facebook's many issues, Zuckerberg only attracted more criticism from
the hearing.
"I say this gently: Your user agreement sucks."
Despite initially launching in 2016, short-form video content platform TikTok grew increasingly
popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many were reconfiguring their daily lives.
According to data from Statista, user engagement on the platform increased from 2020 to 2021,
with the average user spending 19.6 hours on the app each month in 2021, up from 13.3
hours per month in 2020.
As TikTok's engagement increased, Facebook's steadily decreased.
The cause for the decline of Facebook, outside of the controversy surrounding its many scandals,
is due to a shift in user demographics.
At its peak in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Facebook relied on a specific audience to
drive engagement on the platform: young people.
Over the years, however, Facebook has struggled to maintain relevance in an ever-changing,
fast-paced world.
In a report on the trend, The Verge noted,
"Facebook's struggle to attract users under the age of 30 has been ongoing for years,
dating back to as early as 2012."
According to Hootsuite, in 2022, the app is mostly used by people in the 35-44 age range,
which is far from the young audience it needs to thrive.
As of 2022, TikTok is the most downloaded app worldwide, totaling 3.5 billion downloads.
Zuckerberg acknowledged TikTok as being a key rival during a company-wide meeting and
expressed his desire for Facebook and Instagram to focus on video, moving forward.
Whether it will help the company reclaim engagement is another matter.
The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower was not the only person to disrupt the workings
of Facebook.
Two years later a former data scientist on the social media platform, Frances Haugen,
alleged that the platform knowingly spread misinformation, encouraged hate speech, and
did the bare minimum to regulate posts in order to generate an inordinate amount of
profit.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, the former Facebook data scientist said,
"Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend
less time on the site [...]"
When Haugen came forward with her allegations, she submitted thousands of documents from
Facebook's internal system to both Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission
to allege the deeply ingrained problems on the platform and within company management.
That year, she testified in a Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and made
further accusations regarding Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's potentially unethical methods
for generating ad revenue.
Alleging that the platform targets vulnerable users with negative content, Haugen said,
"They know that algorithmic-based rankings, or engagement-based rankings, keeps you on
their sites longer.
You have longer sessions, you show up more often, and that makes them more money."
On Facebook, the Meta CEO denied the accusations, and wrote of his staff,
"Most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted."
Negative opinions of the social media platform were already strong due to Facebook's many
data breaches and alleged involvement in a political scandal with the Cambridge Analytica
leak.
However, Frances Haugen's accusations added a further blow to the company's crumbling
reputation.
Following the whistleblower's testimony, Facebook's stock fell 26 percent, costing the company
and its investors $230 billion.
The unprecedented drop was the biggest recorded single-day stock slump for a company ever.
The stock plummet also came months after Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would
be rebranding to Meta, as a company that seeks to encompass a vision to move toward a virtual
world of social connection.
As for what Meta and the Metaverse will entail, ABC News explained,
"Theoretically, the metaverse would be a place where people can meet, work and play using
virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices."
Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be rebranding and changing its name to Meta
in October 2021 — the same month that Frances Haugen raised allegations against the company.
As part of the rebranding, the CEO shared his plans to expand Meta into a whole universe
of its own, called the metaverse.
Based around virtual reality, Zuckerberg claimed that it will be the next leading internet
force.
During Facebook's yearly AR/VR conference, he insisted,
"We believe the metaverse will be the successor of the mobile internet.
We'll be able to feel present — like we're right there with people no matter how far
apart we actually are."
The exact functions of the metaverse have yet to be worked out, but many are already
wary of its success.
The Harvard Business Review claimed that the rebranding will drive users away from the
platform, writing,
"The company sets itself up to confuse people at best; at worst, it will disappoint people
and further degrade their trust in the company."
Furthermore, a study by The Harris Poll found that the company's name switch and rebranding
actually harmed its reputation, with its trust score falling 6.2% after Zuckerberg's unexpected
announcement.
The move toward the fully-envisioned metaverse is over a decade away according to Zuckerberg.
But that's assuming that Facebook and the other sites encompassed by Meta won't crumble
by then.
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