What the 'Facebook Files' Could Mean for the Future

Have you noticed? A lot of the news on Facebook right now is about Facebook.

It took a former Facebook employee to testify, and the Wall Street Journal’s series of reports called the Facebook Files along with more than a dozen other news organizations joining in.

And on Facebook itself, there is a growing number of posts you see from people who are signing off Facebook for good because they say of some of the revelations about the giant of social media giants.

With more than 2-billion Facebook users now around the world, which represents nearly 30-percent of the world’s entire population, a relatively few number of users vowing to not use it any more probably isn’t a huge deal to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

While he did begin an earnings call to shareholders this week saying, “Good faith criticism helps us get better”, he also said, “But my view is that we are seeing a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company."

Will this be a 19th century Waterloo moment for the 21st century leader of social media? Unlikely. It can be argued that Facebook is way too to big to fail, with as many users as it has.

But based on what you see on Facebook in recent days, this is a moment that seems to be causing a lot of users to evaluate their use of Facebook and all social media.

The pandemic has done much the same thing, getting a lot of us to see some things in life differently. Maybe the pain of the pandemic and the fury over Facebook will lead to more healthy lives in a lot of ways.

(Photo Getty Images)