Group 3 Project Facebook’s Public Image Failures.pdf

FACEBOOK’S PUBLIC IMAGE FAILURES 1

Group 3 Project: Facebook’s Public Image Failures

Patricia Basco, Stephen Gerhardt, and Bryson Schuster

School of Business, Liberty University

BMAL 504: Leading Organizational Change

Dr. Ken Brumfield

December 18, 2020

Author Note

Bryson Schuster

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

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this company for the past 16 years, as Facebook’s start up alone has claims of fraud and theft

from several other Harvard students. Today, Facebook is headquartered in Menlo Park,

California and has a social outreach of more than 3 billion people around the globe (About

Facebook, 2004).

Not much infrastructure has been needed for this massive online company, but they have

17 data centers around the world and office buildings in 70 major cities (About Facebook, 2004).

This company has huge margins for profit as it employs less than 50,000 people but generated

almost $21,000,000 for the third quarter of 2020 alone (Facebook Earnings, 2020).

The definition of Facebook tends to differ based on the user or even the CEO, Mark

Zuckerberg. There are many uses and purposes of this website or application. An accumulation

of Facebook CEO’s statements has been complied into a database titled The Zuckerberg Files. In

these files, Mr. Zuckerberg has classified Facebook as a place, tool, platform, product, business,

community, utility, service, and infrastructure (Hoffman et al., 2016). With that many definitions

for one organization, it is understandable the confusion and sometimes frustration from the

employees and users of Facebook. It almost makes for one tough role for government officials to

Social media has evolved and now is an integral part of the daily lives for billions of

people. A good public image is imperative to creating strong organizational growth, while a bad

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individuals a way to stay in touch and play together. Through this, they had to navigate the

information between customers that both share and oppose other’s ideology. Strong ideas that

range from school preference to religion and politics were countered by policies to control that

information. How these changes were received impacted their image in a positive, negative, or

neutral way.

This case study will focus on these public image failures and how they were met by

Facebook. How did they happen? How could they have avoided? By analyzing how their

policies and new technologies led to public image dilemmas, the author will show not only how

they happened, but how they could be avoided in the future.

Fact Checking and Public Image

As more individuals continue to use social media for sources of news and sharing of

ideas, many have called to ensure that information shared is correct and consistent. The concern

has been so great that Facebook has recently found themselves in congress defending their

flagging or censorship of posts and the detection of “fake news”. It is a delicate practice for a

company like Facebook to claim to be in the business of fact-checking given their status as a

one side of the argument. It goes to note that people with multiple opinions go to point out the

unfairness from their angle. Any type of injustice perceived or otherwise creates disgruntled

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sources got flagged, leading some to wonder if there might be an agenda. Also indisputable is

that congress will be powerless to alter their behavior, with at least another two years of

guaranteed gridlock preventing the removal of Big Tech’s exemption under Section 230 of the

Communications Decency Act. (Chesser 2020, November 11).

This leaves Facebook with a dilemma. To counter any fake news before it does any

damage they need to act quickly. So quickly that you could argue that it would be impossible to

truly research and determine if a specific post might be misleading or otherwise false. Not to

mention that attempting to control what may be considered just a conversation of individuals as

they try to convince one another of their point of view. This quick response cannot always be

controlled by a hired third party and Facebook had to create and rely on algorithmic code to

search and flag posts. Arguments over code being designed to favor one view over another was

hurting their brand. In other words, there is no technical fix, such as automated flagging or

tagging, to the ‘solution’ for democratic conversation (i.e., deliberation) (Andersen & Søe 2020).

Sharing of User Information

Public Trust in Facebook is declining because of a scandal called the Cambridge

scandal. It is also making Facebook account holders concerned about how Facebook collects,

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and their unintended consequences. They warn it is now everywhere and is impossible to escape

because of algorithms the companies have mastered. “Technology’s promise to keep us

connected has given rise to a host of unintended consequences that are catching up with us. If we

cannot address our broken information ecosystem, we will never be able to address the

challenges that plague humanity” (The Social Dilemma, 2020).

In Facebooks community standards they state “We are committed to protecting personal

privacy and information. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves, and to choose how

and when to share on Facebook and to connect more easily” (Community Standards, n.d.).

Facebook has lost the trust of their users by not withholding to their own community standards

by having data breaches. To regain the trust of their users, they need to withhold to the standard

that they have originally set for themselves.

Ethical Considerations for Facebook

When Facebook originated in 2004, no one could have predicted how significant social

media would play in the lives of over 3 billion people sixteen years later, including the CEO

Mark Zuckerberg. A company with this much growth is difficult to develop ethically without

In a capitalist economy, there are enormous amounts of profits to be made from these

users and those profits have prevented any ethical limits to usage and control of the platform.

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leaders need to take a deeper look to see if this can be mitigated at their level.

Many of these ethical issues refer to the younger age of users since these virtual

communities have no boundaries. According to Luxton et al. (2012), “There are several specific

ways that social media can increase risk for presuicidal behavior” (p. 196). These specific

methods include cyber harassment or “cyberbullying”. This phenomenon occurs when multiple

teenagers or adult target a single teen or person. Further research confirms that victims who have

experienced cyberbullying are two times more likely to commit suicide than those that have not

(Luxton et al., 2012).

In the 2020 documentary, “The Social Dilemma” researchers link the use of social media

type platforms with an undeniable positive correlation to teenage girl suicide rates. There is

much research needed to be done to fully comprehend this connection, but it should be a priority

of Facebook’s corporate offices and leaders throughout the world.

Introduction

Good morning Mr. Zuckerburg. We would like to thank you for allowing us the

issues that have challenged Facebook’s ability to work with their customers and local

government officials smoothly. During the presentation we will do both and analysis and give

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(fix this steve) This is an enormous responsibility and opportunity, and we can use it to build

trust.

It is the goal to take Facebook’s large and diverse company culture and strengthen its

foundation so it can weather any public image crisis. We will help you establish programs,

provide for employee training, initiative corporate employee rewards and build off your already

strong mission and vision. (Note: I will add another sentence or two here once I see your analysis

and recommendations.)

Fact Checking and Public Image Analysis

The review of the subject led me to the conclusion that the issues of fact checking and

how it is view by the public comes down to three main points, the first one being trust. How

everyone or readers involved view the source of the fact checking. “Social media certainly offer

to political and non-political actors a free networked public space that is available for expressing

their views. Politicians, mass media and citizens, to a certain extent, can exploit such an

opportunity.” (Ceron, 2018) Is the fact checker done by a third party? Do they have an agenda,

are sources cited or did someone just say, “according to our fact checkers…”?

sources of data. Not to say that there can be two sources of facts but for example, if a newspaper

votes Smash Burger the best burgers in town and another paper votes Big Daddy’s best burger,

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Fact Checking and Public Image Recommendation

Now that we understand the root issues, we can focus on solutions that will be beneficial

to both Facebook, users, and advertisers. I will address them on the same order as above, so let

us start with trust. The bible tells us, “But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest

and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” (Luke 8:15

2020) We recommend establishing policies and procedures that more clearly outline what

Facebook flags and checks for “fake news”.

By being consistent and transparent with your policies you can establish more trust with

your users. These polices would outline more exact examples of what is done when something

has been flagged. Simply stating it as so is not enough. Facebook needs to go the extra mile and

explain why, point out conflicts of interest with advertisers and board members, and cite sources

of data.

The content of discussion is more complex and harder to establish a division between

what is a fact-based post and what is an opinion. Establishing general rules for this would be the

first step. Reinforcement of those rules would be followed up regularly with employee training

corresponding evidence to both sides and allow open and honest discussion that leads to

educated and rational decisions on content. In the example of the best burger, linking to both

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Algorithms are a necessity and need to function as a guide, but not as a search and

destroy initiative. Extra care needs to be taken when writing the programs and management and

supervision will have to monitor employee’s code closely. Requirements for tagging code lines

with simple to read standard text can help explain what these codes do. By requiring this you

would not need to rely on your software engineers to review if the code is biased or forms an

agenda. It could be reviewed by your marketing team, lawyers, and human resource directors.

This can also be used as a transparency tool that could be shared to users and news sources to

show exactly why a post was flagged and for what.

Recovering Public Trust

Since the Cambridge Analytica Scandal in 2018 and the airing of the documentary The

Social Dilemma in late 2020 the public’s trust in Facebook has declined. What can Facebook do

to regain the public’s trust? Facebook must show that they are willing to modify their behaviors

of data mining and breaching of personal information.

Even after the scandal and the documentary made by their own former employees having

and knowing insider secrets, “Does that mean Americans are ready to abandon Facebook in

surveyed state they always threaten to delete the application along with other social media apps