Whatever the fate of the Facebook founder, drastic action is needed to restore trust in the social media giant, but its actions may have queered the pitch for the entire sector says expert.
ADVERTISEMENTWith shareholders giving his firm the thumbs down mainman Mark Zuckerberg was scrambling to reassure them on Thursday, and getting Facebook's share price to rebound somewhat after it plunged in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
However some are now suggesting Zuckerberg's leviathan is out of control. Some, like the CEO of International Marketing Partners, Allyson Stewart-Allen, are suggesting Zuckerberg's time is up.
"I think for Mark Zuckerberg the only way really to undo the damage, you could say, is to resign, and to give a signal to all those stakeholder groups that the business is going to be changing fundamentally, and that with a new regime you can restore trust in the brand, because those new leadership faces, if you like, that aren't associated with the scandal can reset the business."
"I mean, if Mark Zuckerberg does stay, and that's still up for grabs, he will need to profoundly demonstrate that the processes of the business for data protection and user protection have been upgraded significantly and that agreements are in place with third-party applications, that data scraping is now no longer permitted without the express opt-in and permission of the user."
"The change of approach is being led by Europe around privacy and around protection of data of users, so Facebook and all of the other tech businesses will be forced to comply with this legislation and it will certainly rein in their activities, not just in Europe but no doubt around the world."
"So I think our relationship with social media is bound to change on the back of all of these scandals that we've been experiencing over the past few months. Whether it's Facebook, or Uber. or it could be Twitter or LinkedIn or any of the other tech businesses that have forced a loss of trust from among its user base, I think this is certainly going to spark some more scepticism amongst users, not just in America or Europe, but all over the world," concludes Allyson Stewart-Allen.