Why We're Worried About 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, as reported by Insider. The social media giant had a different approach to this issue, however, and decided against alerting consumers to the compromised data. A spokesperson told NPR at the time, "We don't currently have plans to notify users individually."

By the time of the presidential election in 2016, the United States was growing increasingly polarized. 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 Andrew Guess of Princeton, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth, and Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter came to some alarming conclusions. "Facebook played an important role in directing people to untrustworthy websites," the study stated. "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, per The Atlantic. 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.

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 (via The Guardian), "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."

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. 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.

The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower was not the only person to disrupt the workings of Facebook. As reported by NPR, 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, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money."

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 (SEC) to allege the deeply ingrained problems on the platform and within company management, according to Time. That year, she testified in a Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection (via AP News) 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."

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," (via The Guardian).

The exact functions of the metaverse have yet to be worked out, but many are already weary 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, per Insider, 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.