Lessons from the latest PR Disaster at Facebook
In all likelihood, you’ve already heard about the far-reaching Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal. In case you haven’t, here’s a brief summary:
Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, used a personality quiz application on Facebook, presented as “for academic purposes,” in order to gain access to over 50 million user profiles since 2015. It did this in a perfectly legal manner, as Facebook’s user agreement freely gave access to the profiles of the friends of everyone who took the “personality quiz.”
While this news may seem to be “Facebook’s problem” it really underlines some themes all of us need to be clear on at our own businesses, with our employees and clients.
Privacy and Security
While Facebook took some consolation in pointing out that this was “not a hack”, many users were displeased. Elon Musk deleted his and his company’s Facebook accounts and started the #deletefacebook trend on Twitter. Facebook has never truly taken user privacy seriously, and worse, they didn’t make it easy for users to protect that privacy.
Unlike the old days of paper shredders, data is more sturdy. Once it gets out into cyberspace, it’s very hard to retrieve and “shred.” Therefore, it’s important to make sure that, whether in paper or digital format, data of your employees and clients is carefully safeguarded, and if necessary, periodically destroyed.
Do you have these policies in place at your company? If not, there’s no time like the present.
Ethics
Cambridge Analytica, in the wake of this scandal, has been able to claim, rightfully, that nothing they did was illegal. Users had waived privacy rights (or simply, as 99.9% of us do, clicked past the terms of service without reading) not just by using Facebook, but by taking the survey.
Facebook makes money precisely by selling their deep, rich data to companies like Cambridge Analytica. So, it becomes clear that “Is it legal?” is an insufficient question in our fast-moving world of data portability. The question has to be “Is it moral?”
While some might rightfully note that the question of morality should have always been in our minds, the fast-moving world of the Internet has gone a long way toward blurring the legal/moral line. It’s times like this we can slow down, take stock and recalibrate.
Questions of “Is it legal vs Is it moral” only make sense in a company that has stated values. If you and your employees believe that clients are to be protected, not exploited, then you’ll pay more attention to gray areas like this.
Even better, your clients will always appreciate and respect “opt-in” possibilities for whatever you might choose to do, whether it’s a survey, a study, or a simple analysis of what they’ve done over time.
Increasing pressure on government may see more regulation before too long. But rather than wait for that regulation to hit your company, start a discussion and have policies in place that can be adapted, rather than be created, when the changes from above may come
Apologies Necessary
While some observers have pointed out that this debacle is a setback to Mark Zuckerberg’s not-subtle presidential aspirations, he did manage to utter the phrase “We made mistakes” which tone-deaf “leaders” like those at Equifax and United failed to do when their companies publicly stumbled.
Nobody likes mistakes, but almost all of us hate denial of mistakes or a failure to apologize. Walk through “disaster” scenarios at your own office and have templates of press releases or responses ready to go.
That way, if something terrible happens, you’re ready for it and don’t have to do the critical thinking under pressure.
