Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook a “privacy-focused” company. For anyone who has even loosely followed Facebook’s media trail, this statement may come as a shock.

The Social media giant is notorious for having issues with data breaches, privacy, and questionable policy changes. How does a business that is built around urging users to pour in information about themselves change their model enough to become “privacy-focused”?

Zuckerberg explained his proposed changes in a 3,200-word statement. Publications, such as BBC news were able to break down many of the the key points in only a few bullets.

adding end-to-end encryption to all its messaging services so chats could not be seen by “hackers, criminals, over-reaching governments” or Facebook itself

“reducing the permanence” of content posted on Facebook, including disappearing photos, status updates and even private messages

merging elements of Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp so that messages could be sent and received between all three apps

Among these changes, he also explained that the option to post publicly would still be available, and that they would be cautious of where they built data centres. The latter would focus on avoiding countries with a “track record of violating human rights”.

How this could change Facebook’s current model

How do these changes affect the way Facebook makes money? As of now Facebook primarily does business with advertisers who they allow to target groups of their users.

If Facebook was to reduce the permanence of these posts, then it could affect how much information Facebook can use to profile their users. This could effect advertiser’s ability to target users. On the other hand, implementing these changes could result in an improvement of public trust that keeps them from hemorrhaging customers.

Zuckerberg also mentioned new tactics that would allow them to charge businesses in new ways.

The company is also exploring ways that it can charge businesses to contact people on its messaging apps.

BBC News

Zuckerberg promised to have these changes go into effect over the coming months. Many users, however, are still waiting on the Facebook “clear history” functionality promised in May of 2018. The initiative would allow users to delete personal data collected by Facebook.

What you can do

While many of these changes would be a welcome first step for Facebook becoming privacy friendly, it is ultimately up to you to decide how the Digital You is treated.

For this reason we provide posts on how you can manage your social media accounts and download what they know about you. Staying tuned to our blogs is the best way to stay current on any news that could affect the Digital You.

Tap Into the Digital You at ScoresMatter.