Crisis Expert 'Shocked' Zuckerberg Didn’t Say Anything for Almost Five Days

A crisis communications expert and PR firm CEO claimed he was “shocked” that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had taken nearly five days to respond to recent allegations of user data misuse.

“One has to question whether he’s up to the challenges that Facebook is now presented with,” declared Levick PR firm CEO and crisis expert Richard Levick, who added he was “shocked” that Zuckerberg had taken almost five days to respond to the Facebook user data controversy.

“This is a fundamental issue to their survivability,” he continued. “What we’re talking about here is presence. Wisdom comes from not just knowing how to duck, but to understand when issues have stickiness and they’re going to come back.”

Levick continued by claiming that, “Leadership requires not just visibility but action,” and, “Even if there’s no connection you want to be out front. You don’t want to be swept up in those concerns.”

“If there’s new privacy regulation that undermines the business model, then you’re talking about systemic threat,” he concluded. “They’ll survive this but need to look in the mirror and re-evaluate where they want to be.”

Zuckerberg finally broke his silence with a post on Facebook, before engaging in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, where he insisted the company would investigate itself.

However, the damage had already been done.

Before Zuckerberg’s long-delayed response, Twitter users posted under the #WheresZuck hashtag, asking why the Facebook CEO had yet to publicly address allegations of routine mass user data harvesting and mishandling.

Though Twitter users and celebrities attacked Facebook specifically over the allegations that user data had been used in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, even threatening to boycott the company, most ignored the fact that President Obama had also used similar data practices during his campaign in 2012.