Facebook should not be ‘killed’ because of the problems confronting it, but founder Mark Zuckerberg should fix the issues immediately, advised Jack Ma, Alibaba founder and Chinese billionaire.
“We should not kill the company because of these problems,” said the Alibaba chief. He admitted that 15 years ago, Facebook never expected to grow so rapidly and did not realise these problems would surface.
But he urged Zuckerberg to take the matter really seriously and fix it immediately.
Ma, who was addressing the Boao Forum for Asia in China's southern Hainan province, also referred to other issues including the threat of a trade war between the US and China.
According to him, instead of his company being able to generate a million new jobs in the US, as promised by him, a lot more American jobs would be lost if relations with China worsened.
Facebook’s shares have tumbled over the past month after it disclosed that personal data of millions of its users had been given to embattled Cambridge Analytica, a research firm that had been hired by US President Donald Trump and is now facing problems,
Users have now set up a #deletefacebook campaign. Zuckerberg meanwhile will be appearing before the US Congress to address the issues raised in the Cambridge Analytica leakage of data and also its failure to tackle foreign interference in elections and hate speeches.
Facebook is supporting a proposed legislation that requires social media sites to reveal the identity of buyers of online political campaign ads.