Zuckerberg’s new for Facebook
HEN you think of Facebook the first thing that springs to mind will not be “privacy”… and this is a problem CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows he has to solve.
That’s why he has revealed his new vision for the social networking platform in a lengthy blog post.
After a couple of years of missteps and mistakes, Zuckerberg seems to have come to the conclusion that Facebook needs to change radically. And if what he says is true, that’s exactly what’s about to happen… albeit slowly.
There’s a lot of fluff and bluster in Zuckerberg ’s post, but boiling it down to its essentials, all he’s really saying is that Facebook will refocus its service on private messaging and move away from public posting on the timeline.
That’s a big change.
Facebook is now 15 years old and has, according to Zuckerberg, 2.7bn users all over the world. That makes what happens on Facebook a big deal. Zuckerberg has acknowledged the traditional side of the network’s problems, and remains committed to solving them with greater moderation. But he also acknowledges that the privacy and “fake news” issues are also more or less built-in to any kind of open, public network… and may well be impossible to solve in the long term.
That will inevitably mean people turn towards a more private and secure way of sharing stuff with their friends, and that is where Zuckerberg wants to take Facebook.
Earlier this year it was revealed Facebook is setting about the task of re-writing the code behind its three messaging services – Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp – so they could work together.
Now it seems that move is part of a much bigger drive to put those services at the heart of the “new” Facebook.
In his blog post Zuckerberg outlines how that fits into his new vision by laying down six principles his new platform will be built around.
And one of those is “interoperability” – you should be able to interact with a Facebook friend on the app of your choice, and have them receive the messages on the app of their choice… so all your interactions can take place, for each user, in one place.
So that’s where the rewrite of the services comes in, but while that rewrite takes place, there are five other principles to be baked in too.
Privacy is the first on Zuckerberg ’s list – he says people need to have clear and simple controls over who sees what they post. His second principle is that those interactions should be encrypted from end-toend so no one, not even Facebook, can see them.
The third principle is that of reducing permanence – silly things you say as a teenager shouldn’t stick around long enough to be held against you as an adult. And again he emphasises that the user should be in control of how long things remain.
Another principle says users should feel safe in their interactions, but that’s obviously limited given the encryption of the services.
Finally, Zuckerberg says Facebook needs to be sure its data is stored on servers in countries that have strong records when it comes to human rights like privacy and freedom of speech, so the company and its users can be sure that data is not at risk of exposure.
“Over the next few years, we plan to rebuild more of our services around these ideas,” says Zuckerberg. “The decisions we’ll face will mean taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the internet.”
He’s not wrong there – these are big and fundamental changes to a giant network that many people mistake for the internet itself.
The one thing Zuckerberg doesn’t mention is money – with a service so tightly focused on privacy, how will Facebook rake in the advertising dollars it enjoys now?
That’s perhaps a question he is not yet able to answer. We’ll be all ears when he is.
SHOWTIME AT APPLE
APPLE has invited the world’s press to a special event at its Apple Park campus in Cupertino on March 25.
The invitations feature a simple Apple logo with the words “It’s show time” underneath, and an animated version of the graphic features a film-style count-in at the start.
That all points to a coming to fruition of rumours the company is about to launch its own Netflix-style subscription TV service. Also in the works is a subscription news service from Apple, which may also launch at the event.