BIG TECHNOLOGY
Anatomy of a Facebook Privacy Scandal
How Facebook reacts to privacy scandals on the inside and why they persist
It had been a turbulent few weeks for Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg addressed his employees last Thursday. WhatsApp, the crown jewel of Facebook’s messaging empire, was under fire. A poorly worded privacy update had sent its users flocking elsewhere. Millions downloaded competitors like Signal, a messaging alternative that jumped from 20 million users to 40 million just this month.
Zuckerberg’s weekly internal Q&A, the audio of which Big Technology obtained, was an opportunity to identify the root cause and plot Facebook’s path forward. The WhatsApp privacy changes were relatively nondescript, yet the reaction was explosive. So Facebook’s employees naturally wanted to discuss why the company was so distrusted and whether there was anything it could do about it.
“The Facebook brand has become toxic,” said one employee, through a moderator. “What are we doing to improve our brand?”
Zuckerberg listened, paused for four seconds, and then began his answer. “Sure,” he said. “So, a number of things.”
What followed was a revealing look into why Facebook seems stuck in an endless cycle of privacy scandals. The…
