WELCOME

We are not yet a platform that has a built-in

March 16, 2019 by Katherine Berry

We are not yet a platform that has a built-in public social sharing platform. We're not the biggest company, and we do not have the social sharing capabilities of Facebook, and that's okay. We're not the best platform in the world. And we're not the best platform for privacy protection. But what we're doing is trying to make it more public, and we're trying to keep up with the pace of the internet, with our mobile apps and our big social networks. That's our goal as we move forward."

It's also worth noting that Zuckerberg's comments are somewhat ambiguous on whether Zuckerberg will be running Facebook's new platform or an existing one. He's in fact saying that Facebook is running a new platform, called iMessage—a messaging service, while not formally launching until soon after he's announced it.

But Zuckerberg says that, as for the Facebook platform, "I would call it a big platform," noting that it "will be open to new users, and will provide more tools for users to control their personal information."

What's perhaps most interesting about this statement is that it's actually very far from a statement. Although Facebook has already announced new tools and APIs that it hopes to roll out over the next few weeks, there's nothing new about the company's plans. And it's quite possible that this statement is part of a broader effort to roll back privacy protections for some users to the point where they are no longer able to participate in Facebook's private messaging services.

And yet, what's really interesting about this statement is that it was made by Zuckerberg himself. He's the CEO of Facebook and he's at least as much a part of the company as it is a member of the board of directors. But as we've seen repeatedly, the idea that Facebook will be making significant changes to its privacy policy is a bit of a stretch. What if Facebook is going to take the same approach that Facebook did? What if it's going to do more with privacy, like it did with Snapchat and WhatsApp? How about if Facebook does a better job of building a community in which users can take their privacy rights seriously?

Zuckberg's words are certainly not the first time he's made public statements about privacy and transparency. His earlier comments about Facebook's ability to offer a better service in exchange for sharing information have been widely cited as examples of his "commitments to transparency." And at least once, during the same speech, he referred to Facebook as "the most transparent company in the world