Stakeholder #3

            The following blog discusses all the aspects of Stakeholder #3, those who are associated with Facebook itself.

eston. "Facebook HQ" 9/9/2007 via Flickr.
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Description: The final stakeholder in this situation would be Facebook itself and everyone that is a part of that organization. Once the news surfaced, Facebook undoubtedly lost thousands of users who no longer agreed with their terms and policies and left to make their own websites. This rapid decrease in users and huge amount of negative feedback has a huge backlash on the business itself. Facebook has nearly 1.6 billion users currently, so a lump some of a few thousand doesn't seem like much but it adds up over time. Although not everyone associated with Facebook had a say in this new policy, but it was not just Zuckerberg's decision. They did what they believed what's right and if makes their business suffer, that is just a consequence that they will have to move past with time. It was interesting to see that Facebook had not released an online statement about this ban or Zuckerberg himself. Rather it was announced publicly at what seems to have been a conference, and the press took that story and ran and spread it like wildfire. Whether it's because Facebook doesn't want more publicity on this event (because of it's negative outcome) or because they simply just had no need to state it themselves, it was odd that no info could be found from a direct source. The Facebook website can be found at https://www.facebook.com/.

Claims: 

1. "Given Facebook's and Instagram's popularity, "it’s really significant for them to say, 'not on our platform,'” -Erika Soto Lamb
2. “Over the last two years, more and more people have been using Facebook to discover products and to buy and sell things to one another...We are continuing to develop, test and launch new products to make this experience even better for people and are updating our regulated goods policies to reflect this evolution.” -Monika Bickert
3. “Today’s announcement is another positive step toward our shared goal of stopping illegal online gun sales once and for all." -Eric Schneiderman

Validity: The first quote by Erika Soto Lab seems to be applauding Facebook for being so bold about this statement and just completely cutting the sale of guns out of their website and Instagram, effective immediately. Facebook and Instagram are two of the top social media platforms and for them to throw out this policy clearly had a big impact on all of its followers. The second quote by Monika Bickert stays professional and explains how Facebook takes pride in the policies that they enforce on their site and that it is a constantly evolving thing. They do what they think is best for the general public; after all it is a business, so they customer does have to be satisfied. The last quote by Eric Schneiderman expresses his complete support towards Facebook's big decision. Being a huge business, the smallest changes can wreck the entire business model, so making this change obviously upset many people, but in this case there seems to be more support than hate. All three are in favor of Facebook's decision, only further proving that it was a smart move and not one that should be regretted and/or retracted.

Similarities/Differences: This group of stakeholders is similar to the Moms Demand Action, however, only in a slight way. They are obviously expressing their agreement on the situation but it was a one and done thing. You don't see Facebook trying to explain to people why they did what they did. It was an agreed upon decision and they acted upon it, enforced it, and moved on to bigger and better things. There's no personal/emotional attachment that you see a lot of with the Moms Demand Action and the gun traders.