Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook Is Now All About Privacy, But Why Should We Trust Him At All?

In a blog post today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a lot to say. Like 3,200 words of a lot. He wants us to know Facebook is turning over a new leaf.

They're supposedly now going to be focused on privacy and encrypted communications in all their apps. Do you buy that? I don't totally either, but that's what the guy is saying.

Images courtesy: Reuters

Zuckerberg wrote that the company is shifting its focus away from public posts and towards the sort of messaging system WhatsApp has. Encrypted.

"As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms," Zuckerberg wrote. "Today we already see that private messaging, ephemeral stories, and small groups are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication."

Zuckerberg's focus here is supposedly on encryption. And to achieve it fully, he's saying he's willing to have Facebook and Instagram be banned from countries that don't allow it. But you have to wonder just how sincere the CEO is.

Will they, won't they?

After all, Facebook has made more privacy goofs than any tech company in recent history. They've been neck-deep in complaints and lawsuits for two years now.

The company has grown in power and influence largely because of its ability to constantly find newer ways to monetize their product, aka us. They saw the data of 87 million users get hijacked and abused for a propaganda campaign in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. For six months after changing their privacy policy, they continued to give users' data to advertisers and developers, to "allow companies time to get used to their new privacy policy".

When setting up a way for people to then download their stored personal data, they leaked users' Instagram passwords. A bug made 14 million Facebook posts that were initially private into public. Then the photos of 6.8 million users were leaked.

Heck even the founder of WhatsApp', Brian Acton, left the company when Zuckerberg pressured him to give up the app's encryption so he could sell more data from it.

All in all, Facebook doesn't have the best track record for being privacy-focused, so this turnabout is certainly suspicious. That's not to say they can't physically do it however. Last year, people noticed some of their instant message exchanges with the Facebook CEO seemed oddly one-sided. It was as though he'd gone and wiped away all existence of his previous responses.

Also Read: Facebook Data Scandal & Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Have Been The Biggest Tech Failure Of 2018

It was only when pressed on the matter that Facebook admitted it's exactly what happened. It basically translates to Facebook developing the ability to send temporary chats on Messenger, or allowing people to delete old messages at any time. And then they went and gave it to only the CEO to ensure his "pristine" reputation.

What it could mean

In his blog post today, Zuckerberg says he's finally planning to give that ability to everyone on the platform. Instead of having a manual control though, he's suggested an opt-out system where your messages could automatically disappear after a time, like Stories. He envisions you being able to change what that timeframe is, and even setting different time windows for individual messages.

So let's say, against all odds and past evidence, Facebook actually delivers on this promise. What then?

For one thing, it might just be the end of Facebook's main feature, the News Feed. After all, how often do you see original content on Facebook anymore? Most of the time it's memes, videos, or news content. And if Facebook is going to shift focus away from it, that means it'll receive less support in the form of new features, probably with the feature fading from centre stage over time. And that might be great news for Instagram and Twitter.

If that happens, it could also be a huge blow to Facebook advertising, which is geared around the News Feed. Does that mean the company's advertising efforts will shift to Messenger? Possibly. After all, Zuckerberg has previously shown a willingness to pour ads into a secure messenger (see WhatsApp disagreement above).

Importantly, he's also talked about interoperability between all Facebook's platforms. To do that would be to combine the data stores of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which is a bigger deal than you think. Some EU regulators believe this is just another trumped up excuse for Facebook to pretend to be changing the world, all while gathering even more user data. Which is exactly what happens when your WhatsApp profile can be connected to a Facebook account.

So the question is pretty simple: After years of anti-privacy moves, is Mark Zuckerberg actually sincere about this? Or are we being played by the life-like data gathering robot once more?