CNBC: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Gives Us ‘No Reason’ to Believe Privacy Plans

Following Mark Zuckerberg’s promises to make Facebook more privacy oriented, CNBC has published a scathing article pointing out why users have “no reason” to trust Zuckerberg with their data.

Breitbart News recently reported on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to make Facebook more privacy oriented. Zuckerberg’s promise appears to be in response to the recent privacy scandals which have plagued the company over the past year; but as CNBC points out there is very little reason to trust Zuckerberg on the topic of user privacy.

In a recent article titled”Zuckerberg has given us no reason to believe him,” CNBC writes:

 

“I believe we should be working towards a world where people can speak privately and live freely knowing that their information will only be seen by who they want to see it and won’t all stick around forever,” Zuckerberg wrote.

It’s a nice vision, but if history is any indicator, there’s no reason to believe Zuckerberg.

CNBC notes that on multiple occasions, Zuckerberg has promised new ideas and products that never come to fruition or fail to deliver on what he promises:

But it’s not just privacy issues. There are plenty of other examples where Zuckerberg has promised bold new products — like he did in his essay Wednesday — and failed to deliver.

The first time Zuckerberg hyped a Facebook announcement only to let everyone down over a long period of waiting was back in 2013. Zuckerberg got up before a crowd of journalists to announce “graph search.” This was supposed to be a new breakthrough in search engines. It was a search engine you could ask hyper-specific questions to and receive personalized results. You could ask it questions like “music listened to by my friends who listen to Beyonce” or “my friends who live in Houston” and get exactly what you asked for. That’s what Zuckerberg promised, but it never came to be. Just try to ask Facebook’s search these questions. Search has improved since this announcement, but the results are not what he promised.

Something similar happened later in 2013 when the company announced Facebook Home, a custom version of Android that would launch on the HTC First smartphone. Zuckerberg got on stage to announce both products to much fanfare. This was Facebook’s grand entry into the mobile market. Instead, the phone and the software were instant flops, and Facebook didn’t take long to abandon the project, with AT&T slashing the price of the HTC First from $99 to just 99 cents within weeks of its launch.

CNBC notes that while publicly Zuckerberg has promised a commitment to privacy, during interview the CEO has brought up multiple issues with making the company’s platforms more privacy focused:

At least year’s F8 conference, Zuckerberg took the stage and promised the company would release a feature called Clear History that would give users more control over the data Facebook has on them. The feature was thought up just prior to F8, according to a BuzzFeed report, and nearly one year later, it has yet to be released. The company said recently that Clear History will arrive sometime in 2019, but no set date has been given.

This is why I don’t expect much from Zuckerberg’s latest promise. The note itself is laced with caveats that should temper expectations. For starters, Zuckerberg says this more private version of Facebook is a work in process that will take a few years to come to fruition. And Zuckerberg himself addresses doubt in his note.

 

Read the full article by CNBC here.