Business Model Canvas Facebook: how to become a giant?

(We are looking at this from the lens of the underlying needs, how they are served and the things that affect customer relationships. There is a natural overlap with the value proposition) If you are a regular follower of my blog, you know that this is one of the most important categories for platform business models (in the long run) and in particular for social media (or similar) platforms.

There is obviously a lot of value that users get out of Facebook. But first, we need to understand the risks and negative externalities. Saying this, it is clear that we can only get a glimpse into this complex topic.  Negative network effects can bring a platform down before they ever reach potential. Some form of managing negative network effects will be required even in the smallest platform.

Community standards

Some examples that you can find in the community standards are shown below and reading through these standards is a very sobering moment when you realise what platforms (and innovation in general) can be used for.

Violence and criminal behaviour
Violence, incitement, organised crime, terrorism, smuggling, etc

Safety
Self-harm, suicide, bullying, harassment, privacy violations, human exploitation, etc

Objectionable content
Hate speech, violent content, cruelty, etc

Integrity & Authenticity
Misrepresentation, fake news, manipulated media,  spam, cybersecurity, etc

Intellectual property
Content, images, videos, etc

Facebook tries to control the majority with machine learning algorithms but this is not an easy endeavour even when posted in plain English. Add to this that it can occur in different languages, using insider terminology, obscured by special characters, expressed in images, videos, live streams, etc.

Election meddling

All hell broke loose after the US election of 2016 and Facebook’s role therein, followed by probes, investigations, congressional hearings and media coverage. Facebook occasionally publishes taking down “coordinated inauthentic behaviours” and accounts in their integrity section.

Twitter was in a similar boat and has released more details. In 2018, Twitter shut down 80 million fake accounts a staggering amount given their ~300m MAUs at the time. In 2019, they have shut down 80,000 linked to an authoritarian regime (who would have thought).  In the case of Facebook, there are detailed 3rd party accounts that help us to understand the staggering details behind manipulation through Facebook’s apps. Here is a very lengthy account published about a year after the 2016 election and here is a more recent (even more lengthy) account with even more refined tactics leaving us to wonder what will happen towards the 2020 election.

Twitter has banned political advertising (but their revenues from this were relatively small). Facebook hasn’t banned it. And reading the above sources, we have to wonder if Facebook is going to face its biggest challenges yet. This topic is super important – but I am trying to keep my articles not much longer than 4,500 words (which is already a lot). Any of my committed readers can get more on this in the advanced stuff.