scandal after another in the last two years.

Mark Tepper, CEO of Strategic Wealth Partners said in an interview with CNBC, “The market has been absolutely punishing companies with decelerating growth, and that’s exactly what you’re seeing with Facebook. I don’t think there’s any light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon. They’re making some pretty aggressive investments to deal with improving their ad transparency, getting rid of fake accounts, eliminating fake news, and that’s going to be a drag on profits in the near term.

Overall, Facebook shares have fallen by 25 percent over the 2018 year. While Tepper tried to make the case that Facebook’s long-term future would be good for investors, many wonder just how long this downward trend will last and how many losses the social media company can withstand.

Since the 2016 election cycle that saw the win for the Presidency of the United States go to Donald Trump, Facebook and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg have been under attack from many angles. While the leftist-run company was originally exposed for censoring conservatives, the company has also come under fire by his own fellow ideologues in the media.

Starting in May of 2016 when Facebook insiders admitted to editing news feeds to fit an “anti-Trump”narrative, the company has been rocked by one scandal after another. Most of the real scandals that occurred (and continue to occur) have to do with the company’s attempt to silence the right, a fact which Zuckerberg’s colleagues in the mainstream media have kept largely covered up.

But, what has come under a far more intense attack by these same collectivist colleagues is the false issue of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This truly was a non-scandal as the digital information company hired by the Trump campaign purchased information from the social media giant that was being sold to other political campaigns without recourse.

In fact, in 2012, Barack Obama’s campaign had access to Facebook’s entire network of users. This makes the 30 to 50 million user accounts that Trump’s campaign purchased data on, pale by comparison. In 2015 Carol Davidsen, Obama’s 2012 director of media analytics, admitted to this.  Speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum, she explained how Facebook allowed the Obama campaign to “ingest the entire network(approximately 2 billion users).”

Zuckerberg’s cohorts in the media obviously regarded this as fodder since he had helped elect “their candidate” for a second term. The Cambridge Analytica issue showed just how willing leftists are willing to throw their own “under the bus” when it comes to creating news points that avoid mentioning real causes for alarm. 

The mainstream media has also been complicit in alleging that Mark Zuckerberg somehow allowed “Russian” spies to infiltrate Facebook and influence the election that resulted in Trumps 2016 win. The reality is that Facebook has already been exposed taking part in producing false accounts designed to look like fake Russian accounts as discovered and reported by Internet Deputy in August of this year. In fact, it was exposed that the company regularly trolls users who post conservative content with the intent to provoke behavior which the site can use to restrict or ban them. Alarmingly, many of these trolls appear to be radicalized Muslims.

Indeed, Facebook has spent much of its energy silencing those on the right while allowing terrorist groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter continue to operate on its platform. Yet, the left, who backs these anti-American organizations continues to attack its fellow collectivist thinker, Mark Zuckerberg.

The attacks are coming from leftist governments around the world who demand the company to silence “hate speech”. Other attacks come from within the North American continent, from leftist legislators and media talking heads as well, demanding more and more answers about Russian players, election coverage, and other mainstream concerns.

This continuous pressure has taken a toll on the company and shows no signs of lifting. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg called together his top 50 company-heads to a meeting back in June to announce that Social Media Platform is at war and planned to lead the brand as such.

People who took part in this meeting say that Zuckerberg made it clear that he believed that the company didn’t move quickly enough this year in response to the media hysteria surrounding the company. According to them he has consistently been pushing executives to “make progress faster” in problems dealing with platform security and slow user growth.

Zuckerberg has also expressed frustration with his long-time Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg. This spring he blamed Sandberg and her leadership for the negative public reaction to the false Cambridge Analytic scandal.

Mark Zuckerberg also told Sandberg that she should have acted more aggressively in figuring out ways to review “troublesome” content on the site.

At one point Sandberg even confided in friends who said that she wondered if she should worry as to whether or not her job was in jeopardy. Recent interviews, however, have Mark Zuckerberg claiming to be happy with his COO.

On Friday, November 16, Zuckerberg conducted a question-and-answer session with headquarter employees at Menlo Park, CA.  During the exchange it was clear that the tension in the room was high as Zuckerberg referred to recent critical news coverage as “bullshit”.

Zuckerberg, who has largely allowed Sandberg to run the company, has taken a tougher, hand-on role since June. Some say it has caused turmoil at the company from the top down. In September, the cofounders of Instagram quit over pressure to force the brand to add location sharing to its platform—an action that they strictly opposed due to the violation of privacy that it proposes.

In addition both WhatsApp co-founders also quit over concerns of user-privacy concerns due to pressures from Zuckerberg. In an attempt to squeeze more money out of the end-to-end messaging service, Facebook wanted to undermine the intent to maintain privacy of its users.

To add to the various founders of companies that Facebook has added to its massive company, Zuckerberg also forced out Brendan Iribe, the co-founder of Oculus VR, over a disagreement over the future of the technology surrounding its virtual-reality headsets.

The total number of high-profile executives that have left Facebook this year comes to around a dozen or so.

Facebook has had to answer to many for so much of the media hype surrounding the company. It is unclear how much more turmoil the company can handle before it begins experiencing more caustic effects on its profits. From the public perception, it would appear that Zuckerberg’s approach is not going to change, and so will likely go the company.

While the company may have been “doing better” in the past, Mark Zuckerberg has had his underlying feelings and intentions made clear by former colleagues. In 2010, for example, a friend of social media giant executive showed Business Insider an email from him offering to divulge personal data from users in case “ever wanted to know.” He also called users “dumb f**ks” for trusting him with the data which is used to start an account on Facebook.   

Companies such as MiWi and Gab.ai have been springing up in recent years to combat this censorship and start with a clean slate.  In March of this year, however, a private company launched a platform that offers more promise.  Of all the new social media companies to form, Hub.life is the first to offer a platform that is almost completely intuitive to Facebook users.  

Having released its own app in iTunes and Google Play, users can enjoy the experience that Facebook initially started providing—giving its members a voice. Hub.life outlines its mission on its main page which includes giving “users their voice back” and promising not to sell or collect personal data.