Mark Zuckerberg: 2016-2018

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Mark Zuckerberg: 2016-2018

While Facebook is a successful leading social media site in the world in relation to the other sites such as Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, the company has faced several tumultuous periods in its history notably one being the year 2016 and 2018. In 2016, the company was associated with a political firm named Cambridge Analytica, which was able to access the information of at least 50 million Facebook users without their consent. In the same year also, the company was accused of failing to thwart Russia’s attempts of interfering with the U. S’s 2016 elections. Also, in 2018, the company was faced with another scandal that involved a security data breach after hackers had managed to take advantage of a vulnerability in the “view as” feature on the online platform site. As a result, the hackers had been able to access the information of at least 50 million users while an additional 40 million were also considered to be vulnerable to the attack (Isaac & Frenkel, 2018). For this reason, the company was facing an uphill task in repairing their image considering that their stock market prices were crashing as well as the number of its users.

To salvage the situation, the 35-year-old tech Tycoon took it upon himself to repair the company’s image. He decided to testify before Congress in response to an allegation on its role in influencing the 2016 federal elections (Kirkpatrick, 2018). Also, he opted to apologize to the public and its users for the mess that the company had made (Kirkpatrick, 2018). As a result, the CEO and the company released a 5,700-word document which was its manifesto on what they would do to earn their customers’ trust once again (Kirkpatrick, 2018). Due to this, the company’s image was getting repaired and as of now, the company’s stock market has been improving drastically (Trefis, 2020, par. 2). Besides, due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tycoon has also opted to continue to assert his control on the firm by pushing aware dissenters (Seetharaman & Glazer, 2020). Also, the CEO has been vocal in championing various community organizations as well as projects that are aimed at reducing diseases. In return, this has managed to repair the firm’s reputation in some way. While the company still has a long journey ahead of them in terms of challenges, they do have the right form of leadership to overcome such changes.

References

Kirkpatrick, D. (April 2018). The Facebook Defect. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/5237458/the-facebook-defect/

Isaac, M & Frenkel, S. (September 2018). Facebook Security Breach Exposes Accounts of 50 Million Users. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html

Seetharaman, D & Glazer, E. (April 2020). Mark Zuckerberg Asserts Control of Facebook, Pushing Aside Dissenters. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-asserts-control-of-facebook-pushing-aside-dissenters-11588106984

Trefis, T. (Feb 2020). Facebook’s Stock Has Gained 70% Since 2017. Why? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/02/27/facebooks-stock-has-gained-70-since-2017-why/#33a1ae64bf9ds