Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has outlined the company’s ‘vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform.’ While Facebook continues to be rapped by global regulators, data breaches, bugs and overall criticism across the world - a factor that does not change its increasing user base at all - Facebook’s approach to now build a privacy focused platform is a defensive move. We will explain why: At this stage, this announcement sounds like a good move. Maybe Facebook’s users, global regulators and seemingly anyone who knows a bit about Facebook, technology, or even privacy, could be rejoicing that the company is finally doing something. But. Let’s not forget that it has taken a LOT of data scandals, deaths and violence (India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, for example), breaches and a complete disregard for user information and privacy for Zuckerberg and/or his company’s lawyers to come to this point where they think about embedding privacy and non-permanence into their products. But is it genius? Let’s see how Zuckerberg is making a case for himself verbatim “As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms” “Today we already see that private messaging, ephemeral stories, and small groups are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication…. And we all expect to be able to do things like payments privately and securely.” “… But now, with all the ways people also want…
