Meta's Big Self-Inflicted Problem

This past week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will be offering "completely private" encrypted chat for users. That sounds like great news. The problem is in the same week, Meta announced it will no longer be providing this sort of encryption on Instagram conversations, and ongoing news of planned layoffs have created a widespread unhappiness among employees who feel they are being treated like "human garbage" even as the company places mandatory tracking and surveillance software on all their computers presumably to help them determine who is doing essential work and who isn't.

In the span of a few days, you can see a perfect compilation of the biggest problem facing Meta right now: a deep lack of trust that prevents any effort, even a seemingly positive one, from being received that way. In time (if it hasn't happened already), I suspect Meta/Facebook will be studied by academics and top business institutions alike for how completely they have destroyed trust, reputation and goodwill that they did enjoy at one time (back in the early days when they were Facebook). None of that makes it easier to live through right now for those most directly affected, but at least there's hope future leaders can learn from their missteps and perhaps do better.