Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled a new mission statement for Facebook at a community summit meeting in Chicago.
“For the past 10 years, our mission has been to make the world more open and connected. We will always work to give people a voice and help us stay connected, but now we will do even more. Today, we’re expanding our mission to set our course for the next 10 years.
The idea for our new mission is: “bring the world closer together”.
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10154944663901634
This is following a controversial few years for Facebook which has been accused of not doing enough to stop the spread of intolerant attitudes, the spreading of Fake news, and the use of Facebook Live to broadcast suicides and murders online.
To counteract the negative publicity, Facebook are taking a more active approach to create a positive community for its users.
To do this, Zuckerberg highlighted Facebook Groups at the conference in Chicago, and he unveiled new tools to support the group admins.
Speaking to hundreds of very influential group admins, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled new features, including group insights and the power to cultivate and curate over a billion people who are members within millions of Facebook groups.
Facebook is providing a new virtual “toolbox” to help leaders of current and new “communities” manage posts, accept new members and get rid of people who are disruptive to a community site.
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10103817960742861/
Rather than have the new mission be just a philosophy, Zuckerberg insists they plan on being proactive about accomplishing this “We want to help 1 billion people join meaningful communities. If we can do this it will not only reverse the whole decline in community membership we’ve seen around the world… but it will also strengthen our social fabric and bring the world closer together.” Right now Facebook considers there to be only 100 million meaningful group members.
This is an idea that has been reiterated by Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer. He spoke to TechCrunch about it.
“We’re getting to a size where it’s worth really taking a careful look at what are all the things that we can do to make social media the greatest force for good possible”. He views the new mission as a “refinement,” with closeness nested as a more specific form of connection.
