Facebook’s Fall and what it means for your business

The Federal Trade Commission is negotiating a multi-billion-dollar penalty for Facebook’s violations of its consent agreement. In the UK, Parliament physically compelled the turnover of secret Facebook documents that show an astonishing disregard for user privacy- and a knowing, intentional effort to violate laws on the use of personal information. The UK has requested that the FTC assist in its investigation.

In Europe, Facebook is already under investigation for violations of the GDPR. Those investigations are coming along well. Facebook is already facing fines of €1.6 billion and has been fined £500,000 in the UK for its illegal activities. And there’s more to come.

In a meeting of state attorneys general in Washington recently, there was much discussion about ways the states can rein in technology companies, especially Facebook. Meanwhile, the attorney general for the District of Columbia went to court to sue Facebook over deception in its collecting and monetizing of user data.

The DoJ is still investigating Facebook with regards to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, an investigation that is likely to result in charges.

What is Facebook learning about your business? What are you turning over that would reveal your business processes? How about your customer list? Your products? Facebook has already been found to be using this information for its own purposes without permission, and in fact is actively working around the need to get permission. Can your business take this risk?

Considering the decay is already well under way, a business presence somewhere else would seem a necessary shift. A set of redundant cloud accounts (you need business continuity) with robust security protection can give your organization a level of stability and permanence that is no longer available from Facebook, and probably not at Google alone. Google, after all, is dealing with its own investigations and outages).

You can still accomplish everything you want with a presence on Facebook as long as you don’t do more than point people to the real business location in the cloud, where your risks are dramatically lowered. And when Facebook does fall, or is broken up, you won’t lose much during the uncertainty.