What would a "privacy-focused" Facebook look like?
In a 3,200 word blog post yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new, “privacy-focused vision” for the company he founded more than 15 years ago. Zuckerberg said the future of life online is private encrypted messages, calling it “the digital equivalent of the living room.” For a company that created what Zuckerberg calls “the digital equivalent of a town square,” that’s a big pivot.
“Their current business model doesn’t work in a private environment,” Ina Fried, Axios’ chief technology correspondent, told Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal. “If like with WeChat in China this becomes a way that people do business and their private messaging morphs into commerce and other things, there are some moneymaking opportunities. But Facebook has built one of the largest digital advertising companies in the world, and it’s not going to be easy to match that with any other business model.”
Click the audio player to hear the interview.
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