advertisement
Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will start to emphasize on new privacy-shielding messaging services, a shift apparently intended to blunt both criticism of the company's data handling and potential antitrust action.
But Zuckerberg didn't suggest any changes to Facebook's core newsfeed-and-groups-based service, or to Instagram's social network, currently the fastest growing part of the company.
"It's not that I think the more public tools will go away," Zuckerberg said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press.
Critics aren't convinced Zuckerberg is truly committed to meaningful change.
"This does nothing to address the ad targeting and information collection about individuals," said Jen King, director of consumer privacy at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. "It's great for your relationship with other people. It doesn't do anything for your relationship with Facebook itself."
Zuckerberg laid out his vision in a Facebook blog post on Wednesday, 6 March, following a rocky two-year period in which the company has weathered a series of revelations about its leaky privacy controls.
Since the 2016 election, Facebook has also taken flak for the way Russian agents used its service to target US voters with divisive messages and for being a conduit for political misinformation. Zuckerberg faced two days of congressional interrogation over these and other subjects last April when he acknowledged and apologised for Facebook's privacy breakdowns in the past.
Since Zuckerberg's appearance before Congress, Facebook has suffered other privacy lapses that have amplified the calls for regulations that would hold companies more accountable when they improperly expose their users' information.
The multiyear plan calls for all of these apps to be encrypted so no one but senders and recipients can see the contents of messages. WhatsApp already has that security feature, but Facebook's other messaging apps don't.
Zuckerberg likened it to being able to be in a living room behind a closed front door, and not having to worry about anyone eavesdropping. Meanwhile, Facebook and the Instagram photo app would still operate more like a town square where people can openly share whatever they want.
While Zuckerberg positions the messaging integration as a privacy move, Facebook also sees commercial opportunity in the shift. "If you think about your life, you probably spend more time communicating privately than publicly," he told the AP.
"The overall opportunity here is a lot larger than what we have built in terms of Facebook and Instagram." Critics have raised another possible motive — the threat of antitrust crackdowns. Integration could make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to later separate out and spin off Instagram and WhatsApp as separate companies.
"I see that as the goal of this entire thing," said Blake Reid, a University of Colorado law professor who specialises in technology and policy. He said Facebook could tell antitrust authorities that WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger are tied so tightly together that it couldn't unwind them.
Combining the three services also lets Facebook build more complete data profiles on all of its users. Already, businesses can already target Facebook and Instagram users with the same ad campaign, and ads are likely coming to WhatsApp eventually.
In his Facebook post, Zuckerberg laid out several principles that his new vision for Facebook will be built around:
As part of the process, Zuckerberg said Facebook will meet with privacy experts, law enforcement officials concerned about the new encryption making it impossible to uncover illegal activity being discussed on the messaging service and government officials.
Creating more ways for Facebook's more than 2 billion users to keep things private could undermine the company's business model, which depends on the ability to learn about the things people like and then sell ads tied to those interests.
In his interview with the AP, Zuckerberg said he isn't currently worried about denting Facebook's profits with the increased emphasis on privacy.
"How this affects the business down the line, we'll see," Zuckerberg said. "But if we do a good job in serving the need that people have, then there will certainly be an opportunity" to make even money.
(With inputs from AP)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)