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I just don't understand how anyone can believe his vision for "a privacy-focused social network" is even possible this late in the game. There is too much money
by ordinaryradical 8y ago
I just don't understand how anyone can believe his vision for "a privacy-focused social network" is even possible this late in the game. There is too much money riding precisely on the reductions of privacy Facebook has enabled for this to be realistic anymore. The ad dollars come from knowing you, not concealing you. Plus, once you're a public company, the rules change—you have shareholders to honor—and if you got to that IPO by being shady or unethical, backing out of that position is going to be nigh impossible. Their entire business model developed itself on a privacy-destroying data-suck of colossal proportions so where is profitability without that?
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- coliveira 8y agoThis is a PR stunt, as pretty much everything FB says about data privacy.
- hashberry 8y agoSome theories: 1. Rebranding Facebook as secure and private 2. If this increases usage, more opportunity to display ads 3. Their data shows they gain more information by monitoring what people publicly share, not say in private 4. Removes all responsibility to work with law enforcement and governments for illegal activity, since it's encrypted
- ilovecaching 8y agoCould you ever consider that Zuck has enough money, and that he really believes in making a product to connect people for the greater good and use ads to make it available to everyone?
- iaabtpbtpnn 8y agoNo, because Facebook is a public for-profit company, not a non-profit seeking to benefit society.
- AceJohnny2 8y agoIf someone had told me 15 years ago that Bill Gates would become one the greatest philanthopists of our generation, I would've laughed in their face.
- Pharmakon 8y agoWhy? Some of the most venal, greedy, and ruthless people in history made their money then turned to philanthropy to improve their image. I would argue that it was downright predictable, and so would Alfred Nobel. In fact using charity to either improve your public image (as in Gates and many others) is probably only matched by people like Jimmy Saville using charity to give themselves license to continue committing crimes. What’s surprising to me is that it still works!
- praneshp 8y agoRight, the then world's richest started a charitable trust purely so he could improve his public image.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dralley 8y agoI'm sure the competitive drive to dominate (in generosity) plays a role. Look at the rivalry between Rockefeller and Carnegie for example. Once they grew old and their companies either bought out (Carnegie) or broken up by the feds (Rockefeller) they basically switched to seeing who could get their names put on the most public buildings by building libraries, universities, etc.
- ficklepickle 8y agoWhat else is he going to do? At that level of wealth, the marginal returns on greed have diminished to almost zero. So one must find another way to feed ones ego. What is left apart from fulfilling the god complex and saving the world? Edit: has->have
- floatrock 8y agoAs a person, maybe if I squint very very very hard. Legally, he has a duty to maximize value for his board and investors. And there hasn't been a business model that provides a free consumer web product without monetizing user data.
- smrq 8y agoWhy does this shareholder value meme keep getting perpetuated?
- floatrock 8y agoBecause that's who a CEO reports to and that's how a CEO gets fired. Some CEO's like Elon and Jobs can spin a great story and hold on by sheer force of personality, but pension funds aren't buying FB in bulk to get more green cars on the road.
- vonmoltke 8y ago> Because that's who a CEO reports to and that's how a CEO gets fired. That has nothing to do with the legal requirements of the company or the CEO. That would be the same as saying I am "legally required" to go to work tomorrow, because I could get fired for not showing up.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 8y ago> Legally, he has a duty to maximize value for his board members and investors. Please stop repeating that nonsense.
- reaperducer 8y agoLegally, he has a duty to maximize value for his board and investors You should probably stop using the word "legally" in this context. There have been thousands of companies over the decades that put other things before shareholder value, and somehow managed to not run afoul of the law. Also, it might help if you provided a citation to this law to bolster your argument. And there hasn't been a business model that provides a free consumer web product without monetizing user data. Also false.
- na85 8y agoThat's irreconcilable with his actions. Why would a person who believes those things have made the "dumb fucks" quote?
- thundergolfer 8y agoI'm no fan of Zuckerberg, but he said that quote over a decade ago, and people can change their beliefs and values.
- jacquesm 8y agoHe's done plenty in that decade that affirms the quote.
- cronix 8y agoAll of his fairly recent congressional "testimony" fills in the gaps quite nicely. He might not have used identical curse words, but, to me, the same attitude shown through quite brightly. I really don't see a change whatsoever.
- na85 8y agoYes, people can. He very obviously hasn't.
- fucking_tragedy 8y agoThat's a nice ideal, but Zuckerberg hasn't lived up to it.
- rkho 8y agoI see that quote being referenced a lot, and given when it was made I'm curious what it says about whether or not we believe that people have the capacity to change.
- reaperducer 8y agoDo something mildly stupid when you're 20, and if someone finds out about it when you're 40, you lose your job. That's the upside-down society we live in today.
- renholder 8y ago>...and use ads to make it available to everyone? Could you ever believe that's not all that he does with ads?
- stingraycharles 8y agoPrivately he has enough money, sure, but as the CEO of Facebook he has a responsibility to maximize the value of the company. Personally I believe he should pull a Bill Gates, hand over the reigns and take his philanthropy private.
- jacquesm 8y agoNot a chance. I'd trust him about as far as I could throw him. If there is one exec of a major web property that has lost all benefit of the doubt then it is Mark Zuckerberg.
- fucking_tragedy 8y agoNo, because I wasn't born yesterday. There is no limit to human greed or hubris. Facebook is a publicly traded company and is expected to maximize value for its shareholders.
- ENGNR 8y agoA common feature request for my app: remove FB login! These are users who didn't even use it. But just seeing the Facebook login option there next to email (it was the only OAuth) gave them the creeps. These aren't tech savvy users either, just regular small town businesses I think Facebook has a long, long, long way to go towards brand repair before anyone can 'trust' it in any way
- moosey 8y agoMany facebook buttons are trackers. I can understand people's nervousness.
- 908087 8y agoThe use of Facebook login immediately makes me suspicious of any site/service's overall security and privacy practices.
- jniedrauer 8y agoHave you ever looked at what exactly those facebook login buttons load? I don't feel safe browsing sites with facebook integration anymore unless I'm running uMatrix or am in a container.
- ficklepickle 8y agoUgh it is actually outrageous. On client sites, I use an icon and an anchor tag with noopener/noreferrer. One client really wanted Facebook login so I had to make a Facebook account. That was a dark day. On a somewhat related note, that business is no longer operating. I still host their site for free, partly out of smugness as they took none of my advice.
- elliekelly 8y agoDoes uBlock stop Facebook tracking? Or is there such a thing as Faceblock?
- jniedrauer 8y agouMatrix plus the firefox facebook container plugin goes a long way...
- jasonhansel 8y agoI think the best way to fulfill this privacy-centric vision would be to create a decentralized system--something that FB, sadly, isn't really interested in.
- renholder 8y ago>The ad dollars come from knowing you, not concealing you. Advertising dollars are far more lucrative if you think you can trust where you're sharing your deepest, darkests... Imagine what people would share between themselves if it wasn't "public for the world to see". Imagine how many more data points that would produce for targeted advertisements on the Facebook platform, alone. Edit: Including necessary reference to Bill Hicks[0]. [0] - https://youtu.be/GaD8y-CGhMw https://youtu.be/GaD8y-CGhMw
- zeeshanm 8y agoI believe "privacy-first social network" begins with a pretext to have privacy from advertisers, data hoarders, etc.
- jancsika 8y ago> Advertising dollars are far more lucrative if you think you can trust where you're sharing your deepest, darkests... You mean like a Google search? If you don't mean a Google search, I'm not sure what you could mean. What could possibly be more intimate than a person's lifelong history of general queries in their pursuit of knowledge and personal identity? Oftentimes those queries are even natural language sentence fragments that directly convey the person's intentions. What more are you claiming a company could infer by convincing their userbase that their data remains private?
- renholder 8y ago>If you don't mean a Google search, I'm not sure what you could mean. If you're considering buying a motorcycle and have a friend (or a group of friends) that own(s) a motorcylce, are you more likely to ask that friend (or that group) the pros/cons of owning a motorcycle and for their recommendations or are you far more likely to use "nature language sentences" in Google to illicit that information (e.g.: "I'm thinking of buying a motorcycle")? I'm going to posit that the former occurs far more frequently than the latter and that this is the potential "untapped market" for targeted advertising that a "private social network" would be after.
- dontbenebby 8y agoIt's perfectly possibly they'll increase privacy, in the sense that instead of blasting updates to everyone you send them to specific people, with an autodelete. This doesn't interfere with tracking. Most people, when they think about privacy, think about the disclosure of specific posts to unintended audiences. They often don't think about the tracking beacons silently categorizing everything. So in short, it's perfectly possible to have "privacy friendly" Facebook - if your definition of privacy doesn't extend to being free from ad trackers.
- bilbo0s 8y agoThis is another issue, everyone's definition of "privacy" is different. I want total privacy, which I can't have. That said, you're correct to say that there are some people out there who just want a little privacy.
- PeterisP 8y agoFacebook can easily run "a privacy-focused social network" that's not Facebook, but a separate, very different product for separate, very different audiences.
- bilbo0s 8y ago>I just don't understand how anyone can believe his vision for "a privacy-focused social network"... People need to understand, ANYTHING you use on the internet opens you up wide to privacy violations. Anything you use on the internet can end up in the hands of law enforcement. And certainly any SOCIAL network is, by its very nature, NOT private. There is no way to be on the internet, and be completely opaque to the larger world at the same time. Zuckerberg is lying to you. So are Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, and Wire. If you're worth it, the US can track you. (Not just the US, several other nations and organizations can as well.) Your buddy who told you that they couldn't find you behind that pseudonym as long as you were using a VPN? Yeah... he lied. But here's the real problem, no one cares. No one cares about privacy, because they all feel that they have nothing to hide. I know the feeling, I understand the feeling. But this is bigger than us as individuals. The internet needs to be rearchitected, bit by bit. In concert with that effort, we need to agitate for some laws that prevent data sharing. Some laws that have real teeth.
- bitxbit 8y agoIt’s exactly why he/she is pushing for it. Because they can now hide behind the wall that is privacy. People can do whatever they want behind that wall and Facebook can and will not care to monitor any activity. This is their way of copping out.
- tanilama 8y agoJust announcing a diet version of news feed. That is it. Slowly routing traffic to that new facade. They don't have to something super revolutionary, just bit by bit.