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What is the (business) rationale for Facebook to refuse? I mean, beyond the personal political opinion of Mark and shareholders, why would this company defy th

by K0SM0S 7y ago

What is the (business) rationale for Facebook to refuse? I mean, beyond the personal political opinion of Mark and shareholders, why would this company defy those governments? (asking naively because I feel blinded by my opinion, I can't make a good strategic case for it, only a moral one)

nyolfen 7y ago
opening up for one could subject them to opening up for everybody would be an easy one
deogeo 7y ago
Less time and money spent in legal battles (that can get especially tricky in international cases) over individual surveillance requests if Facebook can just throw their hands up saying "It is not within our ability to comply". It would also let them avoid inevitable articles such as "Facebook helps Beijing/Erdogan/Putin spy on protesters". I'm sure an executive could argue those drive away some users.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
Don't you think a significant number of users would leave the platform if they knew the service was backdoored by the government? There are plenty of competitors, many of which offer end-to-end encryption.
dodobirdlord 7y ago
> What is the (business) rationale for Facebook to refuse? Advertising, market segment/product substitution. There's a pervasive idea that Facebook must be gobbling up your communication data and it's starting to weird the general public out. It's very common to see people discussing how their phones must be recording for Facebook because they said something near their phone and then they saw a Facebook ad for it. Making a big publish show of fighting the government over whether messages can be intercepted at all provides the kind of advertising that money can't buy. Also, there will likely always be some subset of people who are more technically savvy and care more about their privacy. These people tend to also set technical trends for the rest of the population. People may leave your platform for being too insecure, but nobody is going to leave your platform for being too secure, so build a secure product and target both market segments. This will give you a larger market, and will also deny your competitors the opportunity to grow by luring away a subset of your users by offering what is to those users a superior product.
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JaRail 7y ago
They need to fix their reputation of awful privacy violations. While the reputation is more out of fear and speculation than it is of actual understanding, they still need to fix it. So when companies like Apple are offering great security, people are scared Facebook is reading their conversations, continuously tracking their location, and listening to their microphones.

by K0SM0S 7y ago

nyolfen 7y ago

opening up for one could subject them to opening up for everybody would be an easy one

deogeo 7y ago

Less time and money spent in legal battles (that can get especially tricky in international cases) over individual surveillance requests if Facebook can just throw their hands up saying "It is not within our ability to comply". It would also let them avoid inevitable articles such as "Facebook helps Beijing/Erdogan/Putin spy on protesters". I'm sure an executive could argue those drive away some users.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

Don't you think a significant number of users would leave the platform if they knew the service was backdoored by the government? There are plenty of competitors, many of which offer end-to-end encryption.

dodobirdlord 7y ago

> What is the (business) rationale for Facebook to refuse? Advertising, market segment/product substitution. There's a pervasive idea that Facebook must be gobbling up your communication data and it's starting to weird the general public out. It's very common to see people discussing how their phones must be recording for Facebook because they said something near their phone and then they saw a Facebook ad for it. Making a big publish show of fighting the government over whether messages can be intercepted at all provides the kind of advertising that money can't buy. Also, there will likely always be some subset of people who are more technically savvy and care more about their privacy. These people tend to also set technical trends for the rest of the population. People may leave your platform for being too insecure, but nobody is going to leave your platform for being too secure, so build a secure product and target both market segments. This will give you a larger market, and will also deny your competitors the opportunity to grow by luring away a subset of your users by offering what is to those users a superior product.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

JaRail 7y ago

They need to fix their reputation of awful privacy violations. While the reputation is more out of fear and speculation than it is of actual understanding, they still need to fix it. So when companies like Apple are offering great security, people are scared Facebook is reading their conversations, continuously tracking their location, and listening to their microphones.