Now that the social media network has reached 2 billion monthly users, Facebook has more power than ever. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg hosted Facebook’s first ever Community-Summit in Chicago. He announced there will soon be new tools to help admins and communities run smoother on the platform. Communities are a huge component of the social platform for there are over 1 million people that use Facebook groups monthly. As the largest and most influential social network in the world, Facebook has a lot of responsibility on its plate.
The new Facebook motto, an extension of the old one, sheds light on these responsibilities. The new mission is: “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” The goal of this mission is to counter the decrease in community engagement and participation happening globally. If anything is going to bring communities together in hopes of tackling global problems, it would be Facebook. Facebook has immense power in respect of its extensive reach.
Due to Facebook’s expanding responsibility, Zuckerberg has set a goal to help 1 billion users become part of meaningful groups. “Stronger community engagement on and offline will be key to solving critical global problems like climate change and public health issues”, Zuckerberg said during the Community-Summit. Facebook has managed to maintain impressive user growth for quite some time and it is doubtful that their growth will stop at 2 billion.
Despite the high hopes of this social network, it is still faced with a few ethical challenges. Facebook is still working on a system to monitor sensitive content in live videos. It is unsure of how to address extremist groups of people who use Facebook as a place for organization. Lastly, Facebook has yet to determine what perspectives and information should show up on users personalized newsfeeds.
Ultimately, Mark Zuckerberg believes that Facebook has the potential to solve many global issues. Facebook has more power than ever due to its user base, but it is up to the users to do something big. We will see where Facebook communities take us. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Facebook’s online communities can tackle global offline problems?
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