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“The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

bigtechnology.substack.com

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Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#11

Post by Mistri »

If this is truly a shift in ideology at the leadership level, it's long overdue, but a welcome change; Facebook has depended on privacy-breaching practices for far too long. There will have to be some serious innovation and effort from their end in order to come up with a different business model and undo the damage that they've done thus far.

This could just be a big sham that the leadership is trying to make a big deal about, but I'm hopeful that they've finally realized that the path they're going down isn't sustainable.

Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#12

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

haolez wrote: post #2

This could be a smart move. Facebook could position themselves as the go-to platform for privacy aware users. They might capture users fleeing Google, Microsoft and Apple because of privacy. I'm assuming that "The Big Shift" is actually sincere and that Facebook's history won't be a show stopper. EDIT: my assumptions are not realistic, so this is probably an impossible outcome. My point was to evaluate if the describ…

Not sure if I should downvote you or flag you, as what you've written seems to come from some bizzaro parallel universe, but even then I can't grok a universe where someone could flee Microsoft for Facebook.

"Yeah I was gonna finish this important Excel spreadsheet, but instead all I can do is like my not-really-friend's cat videos because I value my privacy."

Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#13

Post by haolez »

atonse wrote: post #4
haolez wrote: post #2

This could be a smart move. Facebook could position themselves as the go-to platform for privacy aware users. They might capture users fleeing Google, Microsoft and Apple because of privacy. I'm assuming that "The Big Shift" is actually sincere and that Facebook's history won't be a show stopper. EDIT: my assumptions are not realistic, so this is probably an impossible outcome. My point was to evaluate if the describ…

In what parallel universe would users be fleeing Apple to Facebook for privacy?

I thought my assumptions would make it very clear that this is not a realistic scenario. I'm just evaluating the idea proposed in the article, not its practicality.

Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#14

Post by waihtis »

It is near impossible for Facebook to successfully brand themselves as pro-privacy at this point. When their privacy breaches have been in the mainstream news for years now, the true Facebook business model is just too deeply embedded into the general populace.

Between that and their revenue driver (ads) being seemingly mainly bot traffic based on many of the posts I’ve seen here, it wouldn’t be a wild stretch to say one single black swan event could bring Facebook crashing in the market.

Too much negative sentiment and hot air, not enough true value.

Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#15

Post by na85 »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #5

Hilarious. This is not something that employees and engineers have any control over, and framing it like this is passing the buck. Furthermore, user privacy is a fundamental top down engineering decision, not something that any individual can "do better on."

It was intentionally "leaked"; the whole thing is a PR move. Facebook's entire business is predicated upon having intimate knowledge of its users and is as such irreconcilable with the concept of privacy.

Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#16

Post by haolez »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #12
haolez wrote: post #2

This could be a smart move. Facebook could position themselves as the go-to platform for privacy aware users. They might capture users fleeing Google, Microsoft and Apple because of privacy. I'm assuming that "The Big Shift" is actually sincere and that Facebook's history won't be a show stopper. EDIT: my assumptions are not realistic, so this is probably an impossible outcome. My point was to evaluate if the describ…

Not sure if I should downvote you or flag you, as what you've written seems to come from some bizzaro parallel universe, but even then I can't grok a universe where someone could flee Microsoft for Facebook. "Yeah I was gonna finish this important Excel spreadsheet, but instead all I can do is like my not-really-friend's cat videos because I value my privacy."

I was thinking about Microsoft 365 when I mentioned Microsoft, since its an offering similar to that of Google regarding businesses.

And I thought that my assumptions would make it clear that this is not a realistic scenario. Do you disagree that it would be a smart move for Facebook, regardless of the company's history and context?

Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#19

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

OK, so this is coming from the head of Facebook Reality Labs, i.e. Oculus. Which is incredibly ironic, because Oculus very recently required FB accounts to use the device, which was met with a huge privacy-focused backlash, including from Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus.

So either they are planning to reverse that completely anti-privacy decision, or the author is totally full of shit. Can't have it both ways.

Re: “The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

#20

Post by na85 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #3

It's not the employees at Facebook who are undermining privacy, but the founder.

Some of us have known this for years. Mark, after all, is the guy who got rich promoting "privacy is dead" and then used that money to buy all the mansions around his in order to protect his privacy.

Blatant hypocrisy.

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