Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want your data to be accessible to the masses anymore.
The Facebook founder has watched just about everything go wrong with his company in the past year — data leaks, controversial ad practices, and all sorts of politically influential malfeasance, to name a few problems. And now, it's convinced him to build a new, "privacy-focused communications platform," he writes in a blog post published Wednesday.
Facebook and Instagram, both Zuckerberg-run platforms, were built to be "the digital equivalent of a town square," Zuckerberg writes in the blog post. But as privacy concerns continue to pile up in public, "people increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room," Zuckerberg continues. In fact, Zuckerberg says he "believe[s] a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms" in the future.
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So, following the same vein as the Facebook-owned encrypted messaging service WhatsApp, Zuckerberg says wants to "build a simpler platform that's focused on privacy first." It'll be focused on six core principles: "private interactions," "encryption," "reducing permanence," "safety," "interoperability," and "secure data storage." Facebook doesn't have a strong "reputation for building privacy protective services," Zuckerberg acknowledged, but he countered by adding that Facebook has "repeatedly" built "services that people really want."
Some might say Facebook was supposed to keep data private in the first place, but Zuckerberg seemingly got a different interpretation out of that very public message. Read all he has to say here.
