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Molly Schuetz · Bloomberg
Facebook general manager Mark Zuckerberg had a very bad week, even in the context of a very bad year.
The week of bad news actually began on March 8 with a proposal by US Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to dissolve the company. Then there was the longest interruption of Facebook's social network and services, which almost eclipsed the news of a criminal investigation into its data agreements with other companies. Facebook's technical problem was solved just in time to show the departure of two key executives, including the one closely linked to the company's most iconic product. But the coup de grace was carried Friday with the slaughter of 50 people in New Zealand, broadcast live on Facebook.
"Hedge funds, previously compliant with recent negative stocks, are in the headlines overnight," said Jahanara Nissar, badyst at Lynx Equity Strategies. The departure of two senior leaders was also "worrying – especially since the conflict was about strategy".
The snowball of bad news is catching up with society. Equities had their worst day in more than two months on Friday, down 2.5% to close at $ 165.98.
The negative sentiment for Facebook, measured in tweets on Twitter, reached its highest level in nearly eight months on Thursday. While the thousands of daily tweets about the company may give the negative impression, Facebook had not seen a lot of negative comments since July, the day after the disappointment in revenue and growth in the number of users who had caused the strongest sale of his action.
Warren's proposal reflects a troubling new paradigm for Facebook: More and more consumers, lawmakers and investors are questioning whether the company founded in 2004 in Harvard's Zuckerberg University dormitory is doing more harm than good. well. The complaints are mounting more and more face to the fact that Facebook has done badly to protect data or protect users against the spread of hate speech, misinformation and live footage of violent events. The experts may have been wondering aloud that it was time for regulators and politicians to step in.
And that was before the tragedy in Christchurch, New Zealand, which alone would have caused introspection among all CEOs. For Zuckerberg, the situation could not have been worse.
A few days after Warren unveiled his dissolution plan, Facebook pulled his ads on the proposal platform. Zuckerberg's defense of the social network as a place for public debate and for all points of view was not a good idea. Facebook said that Warren's ads violated the company's policy against the use of the company's logo, but "in the interest of allowing lively debate, we restore commercials ".
Wednesday, Facebook was facing two new crises. Starting at 11:15 am New York time, Facebook applications and sites, from news feeds to Instagram and WhatsApp, began to be used around the world. Problems faced by users ranged from slow loading of pages to deletion of content or problems with sending messages. The outage continued until Thursday afternoon, with Facebook's longest properties being registered offline since 2012. Facebook explained that the problem was a result of a change in its configuration. computer servers. "We are sorry for the inconvenience and we appreciate everyone's patience," said the company.
By the time the outage was gaining momentum, the company learned that an investigation by the US Department of Justice was expanding to include a federal grand jury in New York, said at Bloomberg News a person aware of the facts. The New York Times reported that the grand jury had summoned records from at least two smartphone makers and other electronic devices that had partnered with Facebook, citing unidentified people aware of the demands. .
"As we said before, we cooperate with the investigators," said Facebook.
The company is currently facing worldwide investigations into alleged privacy breaches revealed last year due to its relationship with Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that has obtained data from millions of users of the Internet. site without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission announced last month the creation of a working group to examine the anti-competitive behavior of Facebook, Google and other companies in the technology sector. Several state prosecutors are also looking at Facebook's privacy practices.
"We have provided public testimony, answered questions and promised to continue to do so," said Facebook.
Partly in response to pressure on Facebook to change the way it manages users' privacy, curbs false news, and monitors abusive or violent content, Zuckerberg recently announced a pivotal product development for private communications. ephemeral and encrypted. It was a striking change for a company that based its business on open sharing. And probably caused the departure of one of the senior executives of Facebook.
Chris Cox, who had been working in the company for 13 years, announced that he would leave in a Facebook post on Thursday. Cox has contributed to the invention and development of the information feed, the main channel for updating personalized life for over 2 billion people – essentially the editor-in-chief based on the users' digital life algorithms.
Cox's starting station was referring to a different point of view than Zuckerberg's on the future of Facebook. "We are turning a new page in our product direction," said Cox. "This will be a big project and we will need leaders who look forward to seeing the new direction come to fruition." Chris Daniels, who ran WhatsApp, is also leaving Facebook, the company said.
But none of these questions will put Zuckerberg to the test of the tragedy of New Zealand.
The mbadacre in two mosques took place after someone who appeared to be the shooter posted links to a long racist manifesto on the site and on a forum known for his extremist views. His vision of first-person carnage as he described it was immediately posted on the Internet. Facebook said that he "had quickly deleted the shooter's Facebook and Instagram accounts" and that it was removing any mention of praise or support for the shoot. But that's exactly the kind of event that Zuckerberg is committed to working harder to avoid. The company has hired thousands of people to manually filter off offensive and dangerous content and inject money into technologies such as artificial intelligence to more effectively badyze and filter live video content. And even.
Zuckerberg, 34, acknowledged the difficulty of controlling the content of the 2.7 billion users that power Facebook's extremely profitable advertising engine. The company's business model is based on showing people the messages they are most likely to react to emotionally, which often has the side effect of amplifying false news and extremism.
Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami, said there was "no way responsible for moderating a true live broadcast service." Facebook has always known that this service could "encourage and amplify the worst of humanity, and he must face the fact that he has blood on his hands," she said.
Kamaron Leach from Bloomberg and Sarah Frier contributed.
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