Greg's Corner

Is it time for Mark Zuckerberg to step down?

From the foreign meddling in the 2016 Presidential election, to their alleged role in the ethnic cleansing of the Rohinngya people of Myanmar, to the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has had quite the tumultuous year to say the least. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t even seem to be sorry for their part in some of the worst data breaches in history or for supposedly allowing some governments to use Facebook to suppress their citizens. In response to the Rohingya crisis, Zuckerberg has basically stated that “It’s an issue” and that they’re working on it. This is an issue that affects 700,000 displaced refugees and Mark Zuckerberg responds to it like your cable company when the signal goes out. To compound matters, Mr. Zuckerberg says that it will take years to fix Facebook’s current problems.

By this time, most other companies would be looking to oust their CEO or the CEO would be taking the responsibility upon themselves and would step down. Wired Magazine has posted a detailed article on why Mark Zuckerberg should step away from Facebook and how it should proceed without him. The problem is Mark Zuckerberg has a majority of the controlling shares in Facebook so he can’t be voted out by the board of directors. Not to mention that stepping down doesn’t even appear to be an option he’s considered whether due to ego or obsession.

Users aren’t going to wait years for Facebook to right itself. If Facebook continues to go down this road with its leadership taking little to no actual responsibility could we see Facebook become the next MySpace? All it would take is for another platform to come along to do what Facebook does, but only better. While not a small task, it has been done before.