Facebooki in the Crosshairs

TECH Facebook Takes One Step Backwards, Two More Steps Backwards

It barely touched 75 degrees in Menlo Park, CA yesterday, but Mark Zuckerberg sweat through at least five gray t-shirts. What's got the CEO on edge? 1. Threats from investors Yesterday, a group of major Facebook (+0.40%) investors (i.e. public pension funds and state officials) called for Zuck to step down as chairman of Facebook's board. Their claim: "We need Facebook's insular boardroom to make a serious commitment to addressing real risks—reputational, regulatory, and the risk to our democracy." A *very* quick list of those risks: The spread of misinformation on Facebook to influence elections, its role in promoting violence in Myanmar, a data breach that impacted 29 million accounts, etc. But the move is less about actually removing Zuck and more about making a point. That's because Zuckerberg effectively has absolute control over the board thanks to his 59.9% share of voting power among Facebook investors. 2. More bad headlines Last week, Zuck's crew introduced Portal (Facebook's answer to voice-activated speakers from competitors like Google and Amazon). Everyone promptly questioned whether Facebook—not exactly known for safeguarding data—could be trusted with an in-home device...with a microphone. And a camera. At first, it was reported that Portal would not use your data to target you with ads on Facebook. But yesterday...Facebook changed its tune. It said Portal doesn't have ads itself, but data about your behavior (like your call history and which apps you favor) could be used to target you with ads on other Facebook-owned properties. Oh, and there was also a lawsuit from advertisers who allege Facebook knew about flaws in its video metrics far before it disclosed the issues. 3. Rivals hit the gas While Facebook went into damage control mode, its tech peers executed some well-timed offensive plays. Twitter (-1.04%) published an archive of ~10 million tweets from foreign troll accounts and announced it'll start showing users when tweets are removed for policy violations. Apple (-0.43%) announced a portal to allow users to view what kind of data (like calendar events, reminders, bookmarks, etc.) the company has kept on them.