Will Facebook’s New, Old Style Campaign Rebuild User Trust?

Amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook touted that the company still showed  a 13 percent increase in active monthly users. But, they’ve read the writing on the wall. After many users’ information was “misappropriated” and fake news spread on the site, Facebook’s reputation has taken a serious hit.

In response, Facebook has launched “Here Together,” one of its largest-ever advertising campaigns, which attempts to apologize for not telling you that your information was leaked. I’ll admit, it’s moving – “You came here for the friends,” it begins, then shows a montage of personal moments. Facebook admits their wrongdoing, proceeding to say: “…then something happened, we had to deal with spam, clickbait, fake news and data misuse.” Then they promise, “That’s going to change.” But the real question is: will the platform actually change enough for people to trust Facebook again?

After it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica “improperly accessed data from as many as 87 million users,” trust in the company plummeted. The site was heavily protested on the first day Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the senate. One activist group placed 100 full-sized cutouts of Zuckerberg wearing a shirt that read “Fix Facebook” on the Capitol Lawn. #DeleteFacebook spread all over the internet as many users deactivated their accounts. According to Business Insider, “In the week after the former Cambridge Analytica staffer Christopher Wylie’s revelations about the data breach, just 27 percent of respondents to the Ponemon study agreed with the statement ‘Facebook is committed to protecting the privacy of my personal information.’”

With all of this negative coverage, and studies that report overwhelming number of people who distrust the company, how were they still able to report growth?

Perhaps it’s that, with Facebook’s easy access to news, family and friends, even people who distrust the company can’t stay away. Alternatively, perhaps the representation of those who have moved off of the site will better show itself in future reports from Facebook.

Who’s to say? We do know that Facebook has a history of getting itself in trouble, so even if the campaign smooths things over for now, we can expect to see further apologies from them in the future.

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