The Facebook CEO also took a subtle dig at Apple in China, saying it won’t store any user data at “places [countries] where [data] won’t be secure.”
Highlights:
The year 2018 brought a lot of bad news for Facebook. The company was mired in several user data privacy related controversies, but now the company seems to be looking forward to building a secure social networking platform across all its apps, or atleast that is the message in Mark Zuckerberg’s 3200-word letter addressed to people questioning the company’s ability to provide a secure way of communication. The letter is Zuckerberg’s „Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking”.
“My focus for the last couple of years has been understanding and addressing the biggest challenges facing Facebook. This means taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the internet. In this note, I’ll outline our vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform. There’s a lot to do here, and we’re committed to working openly and consulting with experts across society as we develop this,” Zuckerberg said in his letter.
Zuckerberg wants readers of the letter to know that he believes that a privacy-focused communications platform will become more important than today’s open platforms because privacy gives people the freedom to connect more naturally. In his letter, the executive also laid out the steps taken by the company to provide a secure atmosphere for people to communicate with each other.
He laid out some principles that Facebook would follow while designing and implementing a secure platform where “people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever.” “This is the future I hope we will help bring about,” he said. He also recognised that he may not have people’s support in what he plans to do.
“I understand that many people don’t think Facebook can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform — because frankly we don’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services, and we’ve historically focused on tools for more open sharing.
