Facebook's Dilemma

By Maggie

When you watch the news have you thought about what happened with Facebook? Over the last two years, Facebook has seen many significant changes that impacted society. These changes have had a substantial impact on Facebook’s reputation by allowing Russians to use it. The actual question would be: who is to blame? The Russian interference had a significant effect on what happened on Facebook and in the U.S. 2016 Election, and it’s possible that Trump would not have won without the interference.

Russian interference impacted the U.S. Election through social media hacking, and possibly even coordinating with the Trump campaign. Some people like Robert Mueller, an American attorney, believe that Donald Trump has been working with the Russians to mess with the votes. The Russians were convincing people on Facebook to vote for Donald Trump and may even have hacked voter centers. Facebook wasn’t fast enough in realizing that this would impact the election. They are now trying to“make sure that we build systems to prevent what happened from happening again,” according to Facebook VP David Marcus. Some of the high officials are working on finding out who is causing this chaos. Robert Mueller already convicted 13 Russian nationalists and 12 Russian military intel officers. Thus, I do believe that they should continue the investigation without any distractions.

There have been some downfalls to Facebook following the election, and it is now working to save its reputation. Facebook is working on hiring people to remove Russian hackers and promoters. They are hiring about a thousand people to hunt down Russian users. Facebook is making many updates because of this occurrence. They released an “independent election research commission” that will remove misinformation and election manipulations. Facebook should be focused on how to keep the members safe. For the next election, they should ban the names of the runners so other people’s ideas won’t impact the election. Overall, I do believe that Facebook should be focused on how their viewers feel and keeping them safe.

As Facebook should be keeping their viewers safe, they should also look into who is to blame. Most people believe it is the CEO of Facebook who should take responsibility. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, was first called out for allowing Russians to interfere with the election. One day, Zuckerberg addressed some of the developers about what happened. “I hear fearful voices calling for building walls, and distancing people they label as ‘others,’” quoted Zuckerberg during the meeting. Other people blame Donald Trump to be the cause of the Russian hacking. They say that he is teaming up with Vladimir Putin to win the election. Donald Trump would most likely to be teaming up with Vladimir Putin for something big. Both Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump share some responsibility for what happened in America and on Facebook, and both should be held accountable.

The Russian interference did have a significant impact on social media that changed history.  If elections like the last one happen again, then it might create an unstable government and have it unable to be restored. Facebook fell for a while but still regained its trust back from its users. It would be easier to blame the President of the U.S for this catastrophe. How would you feel if you were a CEO of a big social media company and it got hacked?