Facebook Outlines Its ”PRIVACY FOCUSED” Policy As Per Mark Zuckerberg

THE BACKGROUND

Facebook has been under the hammer and attracted a lot of heat for its lapses in privacy of data of its users and being a medium of spreading fake news around the globe. Facebook was between the controversy of the general elections in the US which were won by Donald Trump and have allegations that Russia had interfered in the general elections using Facebook as a marketing tool. Facebook had to face another scandal last March of Cambridge Analytical which lead to loss of $80 billion in value of Facebook shares after few days. The aftermath of this scandal was that the chief executive of the Cambridge Analytical was suspended pending further investigation. It is said according to Edison Research that Facebook has lost approximately 15 million users in the US MARKET since 2017 which is the 2nd biggest market for Facebook.

MARK ZUCKERBERG\’S OUTLINE

He said: \”\”Facebook and Instagram have helped people connect with friends, communities, and interests in the digital equivalent of a town square\”. He also focused on the need of people as well by saying \”But people increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room.\” According to Zuckerberg he firmly believes that open platforms will lose their popularity eventually and people will move to private and secure messaging services. He had mentioned that his vision is to evolve Facebook into a PRIVACY FOCUSED PLATFORM. One of the privacy goals that he mentioned was around the storage of sensitive data in countries where human rights including privacy, freedom of speech and political interference are abused. The interesting part of the whole outline is that no timeline was given by Facebook of the implementation of the privacy outline. One can assume that the implementation of the privacy outline would take place int he coming few years.

THE ISSUE:

Facebook is facing advertisement issues that is a hurdle in its revenue generation as messaging service is encrypted as Facebook owns Messenger and WhtsApp. This is an issue for Facebook as it cannot generate profits or revenue via advertisement path.

For every technological advancement there is an opportunity and here we can see with encrypted messaging service new business tools will be developed to incorporate the changes. This is indeed a new direction for Facebook and can effect the way people look at the organisation. Facebook is going from supple to demand model where its making changes according to the suggestions, ideas and feedback from its users which are the most precious entity for Facebook. In the past Facebook had given users what it thought the users would need and would make changes after getting feedback from users. Mark Zuckerberg himself admitted of having low privacy security on Facebook by saying \”Frankly we don\’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services\”.

We can all hope that the new direction will keep Facebook clear of any scandals related to breach in privacy of its users and see it grow because of privacy of users is not taken seriously and actionable results come through the future of Facebook might not be as bright as its planned.