The hottest world news currently is the mishap Facebook is being held responsible for. Mark Zuckerberg is thoroughly scrutinized by the American government for not being to keep user data safe. During March, 2018, news broke out in all corners of the world that a London based political analytics provider, known as Cambridge Analytica used data of 50 million Facebook users for various political propaganda. This story spread like fire and raised some very important shortcomings of the most popular social media application. It made us question – How secure is the use data and how shoddy are the privacy policies of these online platforms? With automation and other technologies taking the lead, data security has been an extremely sensitive issue during the past few years.
Facebook has made some terrible mistakes, but there are some very important lessons to be learnt from this incident for all the other business owners out there. We bring to some very crucial takeaways from the Facebook scandal, and you might want to pay some attention here. Read along.
One of the most important mistakes Zuckerberg actually made was that it took him 5 whole days before he made a statement regarding this issue. When you know your company is responsible for such a big mess, it is extremely important to deal properly with your 2 million users. The response time is a very crucial period, and the PR team has to handle this situation with highest precision so that the situation doesn’t worsen. You need to get all your facts in order, so that you don’t contradict your own statements or give out any false information. You respond as soon as possible, but you have to get control over your story, before the story is controlling you.
Another major problem in this case was that most people had no idea that their personal information was being used for political propaganda, and to gain political control. Why do businesses collect data? Data is collected in order to carry out a more personalized marketing campaign for the customers. Data allows companies to send out targeted emails or offer a more personalized service. People will be willing to share their information for better shopping experiences, so it is important that they know that this information won’t be misused. The users should have control over the information more than the company itself. Moreover, they should have the option of opting out anytime they feel uncomfortable.
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