Why are people walking away from Facebook in droves --hence the plummeting stock prices? Plain and simple because they don't trust Facebook any longer, given revelations of massive privacy breaches during the 2016 election cycle. So what can be done to reverse this image of an untrustworthy company? Feelgood advertising alone doesn't seem to be doing the trick thus far. So my suggestion is this: why doesn't Facebook become THE COMPANY that defines a new industry trend --> by setting the Gold Standard for consumer privacy protection in a new era where the present pro-business FCC seems hellbent on repealing all of the progress the Obama administration made toward the end of protecting consumers and the little guy on the internet. Moving forward Facebook should go out of their way to create a robust and secure environment which will allow consumers to opt-in to sharing their private information, likes and dislikes, as opposed to trying to navigate a complex web of ever-changing legalease in order to opt-out of sharing their private data and consumer preferences. Some users genuinely like and prefer a stream-lined end-user experience with customized ads and targeted content, but companies who want to be TRUSTED should let the user decide what to share, where and when. Maybe Facebook could even incentivise sharing of user information and preferences by allowing for additional feature enabling on a point-based system or something?
The bottom line is that in an age where consumer privacy is nearly non-existent Facebook could become the one company that actually champions winning back a bit of privacy (and by default a modicum of protection) for the little guy. Privacy it seems has become the new currency in our modern technological age and the company who 'spends' it wisely will be the company to succeed where others fail, in the long-term, I predict.
10/24/2018 Some further fuel for thought: "blockchain" and "cryptocosm."
