Mark Zuckerberg must be a sort of hypnotist. In the span of a decade, he has convinced billions of people around the world to trust his company with personal information in return for . . . ?
In recent years Facebook has been accused of mishandling that information. But his company trundles on, continuing its information business. And sales are booming.
"This time will be different," Mr. Zuckerberg says, hoping we haven't heard that line before. This time, there's gonna be encryption, whatever that is. But will this new sorcery keep our information safe? Who knows?
To his credit, Mr. Zuckerberg knows his stuff when it comes to social media. Look at his checking account balance. Now the Facebook inventor says there's a digital shift coming as people share fewer things publicly and more in private spaces, according to NBC News.
On paper, this sounds promising. It'll theoretically lead to less fake news and fewer conspiracy theories going viral. The problem may be with who is handling the information. It's still Facebook and a handful of folks in Silicon Valley. Sure, the app name may be WhatsApp instead of Facebook, but it's still Zuckerberg's fingerprints on everything.
From NBC:
"WhatsApp messages are already encrypted end-to-end, which means the messages are not stored on WhatsApp's servers and the company can't read them or hand them over to authorities. Facebook's Messenger has a similar feature that users can opt into, and Zuckerberg said the company would work toward implementing the same encryption for all private communications."
That also sounds good on paper. But after all the recent data blunders on Facebook's part, excuse us for being slightly cynical. It's part of this business. And the recent blunders by so many companies "losing" information doesn't help the cynicism.
Editorial on 03/09/2019