Facebook gets thumbs down for handling of data scandal

When it comes to its handling of the scandal over how its users' data was harvested to help elect US President Donald Trump, Facebook gets an almighty thumbs down from crisis management experts.

Public relations specialists questioned by AFP were damning in their verdict of how the world's biggest social network has dealt with the fall-out of the revelations that Cambridge Analytica obtained users' personal information to try to manipulate US voters.

Slow and unconvincing explanations they say have left Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dangerously exposed.

While the news that the data of 50 million users had been hijacked broke in the The Observer newspaper on March 17, it took Zuckerberg five days to publicly address the firestorm by apologising first on Facebook and then CNN.

That is an eternity in the digital age, said Marie Muzard, head of the MMC communications agency.

"The most basic of basics in crisis management is that every hour that passes without reacting allows a little more sound and fury to gather," she said.

What makes that all the more ironic was that much of that fury was gathering on Facebook itself.

"Because Facebook is a communications platform it has especially a responsibility to be timely and proactive in its response," said Seth Linden, president of New York-based Dukas Linden Public Relations.

"It's one of the most influential brands in the world, which made the lack of a timely response even more negatively impactful."
Muzard warned that Zuckerberg is personally vulnerable if the "crisis of confidence lingers on. He might find it hard to hold on if shareholders start getting out. Things can happen very quickly. His equivalent at Uber did not survive a series of crises, and because Zuckerberg personifies Facebook there is no real fall guy to take the bullet for him."