Early Facebook Investor: ‘No One Should Trust Facebook Until They Change Business Model’

Early Facebook investor Roger McNamee warned “no one should trust Facebook” until the company changes its data-harvesting and information selling business model, according to a report.

The New York Times reported, Tuesday, on Facebook’s user data scandals, including new revelations about the social network’s sharing of user data with third parties, and included a quote from McNamee.

“No one should trust Facebook until they change their business model,” declared McNamee, who is releasing a book titled Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe in February.

McNamee is a frequent critic of Facebook, and in March, the investor made similar comments calling on the company to change it’s business model.

“If you want to restore trust, you have to accept that some of your past business practices are deeply harmful to people,” the investor proclaimed. “And you have to change them, even if there’s a cost to short-term earnings. Because, I think, in the long run, the brand is much more valuable to the extra penny of earnings that would come from maintaining the old business practice.”

McNamee also previously claimed that making users “angry” and “afraid” is “really good for Facebook’s business.”

In the New York Times’ article published on Tuesday, the newspaper reported Facebook “began forming data partnerships when it was still a relatively young company,” and that by 2013, “Facebook had entered into more such partnerships than its midlevel employees could easily track,” citing former Facebook employees who spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity.

Facebook also reportedly allowed its partners, including Spotify and Netflix, to read users’ private messages without the users’ consent, and “used contact lists from the partners, including Amazon, Yahoo and the Chinese company Huawei — which has been flagged as a security threat by American intelligence officials — to gain deeper insight into people’s relationships and suggest more connections.”