There seem to be more solutions to the Facebook Problem than Facebook has problems. I posted a simplistic solution last week, which was for everyone over 40 to cancel their Facebook and Instagram accounts. Silly and impractical.
Many columnists, such as media critic Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, want the government to take action. Sullivan, in an October 6, column titled “Facebook is harming our society. Here’s how to reign it in,” writes:
A problem that threatens the underpinnings of our civil society calls for a radical solution: A new federal agency focused on the digital economy.
The idea comes from none other than a former Federal Communications Commission chairman, Tom Wheeler, who maintains that neither his agency nor the Federal Trade Commission are nimble or tech-savvy enough to protect consumers in this volatile and evolving industry.
“You need an agency that doesn’t say ‘here are the rigid rules,’ when the rules become obsolete almost immediately,” Wheeler, who headed the FCC from 2013 to 2017, told me Monday.
Too much of the digital world operates according to Mark Zuckerberg’s famous motto: “Move fast and break things.” That’s a perfect expression of what Wheeler called “consequence-free behavior.”
I am uncomfortable with a government solution because, even though I am generally in favor of government regulation to reign in greedy business behavior, regulating Facebook means, essentially, defining free speech, which I worry about the government doing.
Kara Swisher of the NY Times in her October 5, column titled “Brazen Is the Order of the Day at Facebook” interviewed Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former head of security at Facebook. Stamos had the following solution:
I think Zuckerberg is going to need to step down as C.E.O. if these problems are going to be solved. Having a company led by the founder has a lot of benefits, but one of the big problems is that it makes it close to impossible to significantly change the corporate culture. It’s not just Zuckerberg; the top ranks of Facebook are full of people who have been there for a dozen years. They were part of making key decisions and supporting key cultural touchstones that might have been appropriate when Facebook was a scrappy upstart but that must be abandoned as a global juggernaut. It is really hard for individuals to recognize when it is time to change their minds, and I think it would be better if the people setting the goals for the company were changed for this new era of the company, starting with Zuckerberg.
I like this solution. Facebook’s Board of Directors could fire Zuckerberg and Sandberg. There are nine members of the board:
- Zuckerberg
- Sandberg
- Peggy Alford – Formerly Pay Pal
- Marc Andreesen – Co-founder Netscape, investor
- Andrew Houston – CEO Dropbox
- Nany Killefer – Formerly McKinsey
- Robert Kimmitt – Lawyer
- Peter Theil – Formerly Pay Pal, FB investor
- Tracey Travis – Formerly CFO Estee Lauder
I don’t know the Facebook bylaws, but if a majority of the board can fire the CEO and COO, they should do so.
By the Board of Directors taking action to solve the problem, it would be a situation of a business policing itself and, thus, avoiding government regulation.
I’m also in favor of peaceful protests. I’d love to see a protest crowd appear outside Facebook’s headquarters with signs saying FIRE ZUCKERBERG AND SANDBERG. Such a protest might not have an immediate effect, but it might get the board thinking in the right direction.
