Mark Zuckerberg must leave Facebook?

A few weeks ago, after Facebook revealed that tens of millions of accounts of its users had been exposed due to a security breach, I started asking people whether or not in the technology sector: Mark Zuckerberg should continue to run Facebook?

I spare you the suspense. Almost everyone said that Zuckerberg was still the ideal man for this job, perhaps the only one. Respondents include people working on Facebook, former company employees, financial badysts, venture capitalists, technology-skeptical activists, fervent business critics and business badysts. his most energetic supporters.

According to the consensus: Although Zuckerberg – as the founder, executive director, president and most powerful shareholder of the social network – badumes much of the responsibility for the recent catastrophic events of the company, he is the only to be able to solve them.

his supporters told me that he was even ill-intentioned to sort out the problem: Zuckerberg was so indispensable that the only reason he could have to ask was if he had to stay at the head from the company was the clicks that he would get with this article. However, even his critics objected to the idea that Zuckerberg is leaving his post. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute, an organization that fights against monopoly, explained that Facebook's problems had their origin in its business model and in the legal and regulatory vacuum in which it operated, not in the man who runs the business.

Few people can imagine a Facebook without Zuckerberg, 34, underlines how much our big tech companies are no longer held to account. With his momentum and his genius, Zuckerberg has become one of the world's most powerful unelected leaders. Like a mobile oil company or a sugar-abusing food company, Facebook makes decisions that have enormous consequences on society and have benefited enormously from the chaos.

However, because of the ownership structure of the social network – the fact that Zuckerberg's shares have a voting power ten times greater than ordinary shares – is all-powerful and does not account to anyone.

"To be honest, if we took Mark Zuckerberg and replaced him with Mahatma Gandhi, I think society would change significantly."

This is a model. Over the past two decades, the largest technology companies have created a system in which leaders experience few personal or financial consequences for their mistakes. The big companies in the technology sector have turned the founders into fixed elements: when their businesses work well, they retain all the credit and when they do wrong, they are the only heroes capable of fixing everything.

There is another way to say it. : for better or for worse, Zuckerberg has become too big to go bankrupt.

In the United States, it is not uncommon for senior executives to receive no sanction for the operation of their companies (eg, Wall Street after the 2008 financial crisis.

Even in Silicon Valley , where founders of companies are revered as fantastic unicorns generating money, the patience of companies has its limits.In the eighties, Apple returned Steve Jobs.Uber last year, Uber did the same with Travis Kalanick, who was as faithful to his company's culture as Zuckerberg's

Facebook's problems did not reach the level of anarchy observed in Uber, but they had much more consequences. In addition to the leak, Facebook has been involved in the global disintegration of democracy, particularly for its role as a bearer of Russian misinformation during the 2016 US presidential election.

UN investigators said that Facebook was fundamental to the genocide in Burma; He has also been badociated with violence in India, South Sudan and Sri Lanka. There have been privacy scandals (the latest in Cambridge Analytica), advertising scandals (discriminatory ads, suspicious settings), several ongoing federal investigations and recognition that Facebook's use of can affect your mental health.

Although Zuckerberg apologized. and promised again and again to solve the problems of Facebook, the company's solutions also need solutions. Over the past week, reporters have shown that the company's recent decision not to follow up on political ads did not work (Vice News bought ads on Facebook that falsely claimed that "the vice-president President of the United States, Mike Pence, had paid them "and the Islamic State.)

So, given these flaws, another question could be: why was no one punished on Facebook? Although notorious defections have occurred – the co-founders of WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus, the companies that bought the social network, have left the country in the last two months – the most loyal leaders of Zuckerberg have accompanied the bad guys, a lot for over a decade.

If Facebook now admits that its problems were caused by a culture too fast and too idealistic, and that if it now allows its culture to change, how can we be of course, this will happen if most users of the platform are still the same?

When I asked Facebook about it, the company claimed that things were changing. He has just recruited Nick Clegg, former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to head Global Affairs – a decision which, according to the company, has brought the serious perspective of a person outside the company – [19659002] The social network also He put on the phone a senior executive who strongly opposed the leadership of Zuckerberg, but refused to do it officially. The executive explained that solving Facebook's problems would involve significant costs. For example, the company is hiring more people to review content and may have to slow down some of its more ambitious projects to cope with its impact on the world. The executive argued that Zuckerberg's total dominance of Facebook's capital, in addition to the respect its employees gave him, enabled it to withstand the financial consequences of these changes better than any other leader.

The price of Facebook shares it dropped by almost 20% in a single day this summer after announcing lower revenue growth and increased operating costs. This week, the social network reiterated its warning about slowing growth. A "professional executive director", someone who does not have such an important stake in the company, would be tempted to try to choose the simplest solution, suggested the manager. However, Zuckerberg was free to do what was right.

Zuckerberg's supporters claimed that he had demonstrated a great ability to understand and solve Facebook's problems. After listing the company in 2012, the price of its shares dragged on for months because it did not plan to generate money with the pbadage of consumers to mobile devices.

"Mark would say that it took too long to understand the importance of mobile, but when it became obvious, he understood his seriousness and his resolve," said Don Graham, a former Facebook board and former editor of the Washington Post. "He has changed the direction of this company incredibly fast, in detail, not just with one measure, but with twenty … and if we look at the quarterly figures of the percentage of revenue from the mobile phone sector, we do not could we believe how quickly. "

The question on Facebook is now whether Zuckerberg has also devised the solution to his current problems. He said this was his personal challenge for 2018. However, there are signs that his culture remains the same.

Let's see, for example, his promise that a new central device for the home, Portal, was unveiled last month. , would not collect information about users that can be used in advertisements. He quickly had to back down because Facebook's data collection system is so widespread that even some of its employees do not seem to understand it.

"I think that has clearly failed in the last two years, and the reason for her failure is that she is not responsible," said Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook employee who is now working as as the strategic director of the Center for Human Technology, a militant organization. "Given the context in which shareholders and board members have had more influence, it is hard to imagine that There could be no faster changes. "

One solution for Facebook might be to give the board more power over the company.Trillium Asset Management, an investment firm, recently released a shareholder resolution backed by several public funds that would require Zuckerberg to step down from his position as Facebook chairman, although he still holds the bulk of the company's vote control.

I think leaving the position of Chairman of the Board is a very important structural change, so he does not have the freedom to make his decisions worthwhile, "said Jonas Kron, Senior Vice President of the Board. President of Trillium.

A Facebook spokesperson said that the company had not yet taken a stand on the resolution. In the past, Zuckerberg and his allies vetoed similar measures.

What leaves us here: o Zuckerberg corrects Facebook or nobody will do it. This is the alternative we face, whether we like it or not.

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