Facebook has had its fair share of challenges in the last few years. The turmoil culminated with Cambridge Analytica, a scandal that saw the accounts of millions of users affected.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg even appeared in front of the US Congress in the wake of the scandal. In the eyes of the public, the company had failed to safeguard the privacy and trust of its users and soon after, calls for a mass exodus out of Facebook started.
A couple of public figures were the first to go and even though the exodus clamor has died down in recent months, there are still some big-name Facebook users who are leaving. One of these big names to recently announce his departure from Facebook is Stephen King. The famous horror author announced on Twitter that he’s “quitting Facebook” due to the “flood of false information” on it.
Facebook’s recent stance of not fact-checking political ads may have also contributed to King’s decision. The social media company came under fire in recent weeks after it allowed an ad by the Trump campaign to run for days even though it contained a lot of false claims.
Facebook noted at the time that it doesn’t fact-check political ads. The social media company also noted that political ads are designed to reach their audience as intended by the ad owners and as such, it didn’t see any reason to interfere.
King also noted that he was leaving the platform since he’s no longer confident the company has the “ability to protect its users’ privacy.” King is still active on Twitter though and he becomes the latest high-profile user to leave Facebook. Just last year, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also announced that he had left Facebook and moved to encourage users around the world to do the same.
Wozniak was also joined in the exit campaign by Elon Musk, Rosie O’Donnell and others. As a matter of fact, even former Facebook executives have left the platform and have expressed serious concerns about the company’s data practices and its privacy policies.
Facebook has said numerous times that it is doing everything it can to curb the spread of false information on its platform. The social media company has put in place a raft of measures to this effect but it seems there are still people out there who are not confident enough to stick around.
Facebook was largely blamed for letting foreign powers interfere with the 2016 US election. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg even admitted that the company could have done more to prevent the misinformation campaign and vowed to fix the issue. We aren’t sure how prepared the social media giant is for 2020, even though it just recently deleted dozens of fake pages. However, the exodus of big names is a worrying concern that could wreak havoc on its credibility.
