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   They rolled out end-to-end encryption and made it happen for a billion people   
   in WhatsApp," Pfefferkorn said. "It's not necessarily impossible."   
   WhatsApp's past is now Facebook's future   
       
   In looking to the future, Zuckerberg first looks back.   
       
   To lend some authenticity to this new-and-improved private Facebook,   
   Zuckerberg repeatedly invokes a previously-acquired company's reputation to   
   bolster Facebook's own.   
       
   WhatsApp, Zuckerberg said, should be the model for the all new Facebook.   
       
   "We plan to build this [privacy-focused platform] the way we've developed   
   WhatsApp: focus on the most fundamental and private use case-messaging-make it   
   as secure as possible, and then build more ways for people to interact on top   
   of that," Zuckerberg said.   
       
   The secure messenger, which Facebook purchased in 2014 for $19 billion, is a   
   privacy exemplar. It developed default end-to-end encryption for users in 2016   
   (under Facebook's stead), refuses to store keys to grant access to users'   
   messages, and tries to limit user data collection as much as possible.   
       
   Still, several users believed that WhatsApp joining Facebook represented a   
   death knell for user privacy. One month after the sale, WhatsApp's co-founder   
   Jan Kaum tried to dispel any misinformation about WhatsApp's compromised   
   vision.   
       
   "If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we   
   wouldn't have done it," Kaum wrote.   
       
   Four years after the sale, something changed.   
       
   Kaum left Facebook in March 2018, reportedly troubled by Facebook's approach   
   to privacy and data collection. Kaum's departure followed that of his   
   co-founder Brian Acton the year before.   
       
   In an exclusive interview with Forbes, Acton explained his decision to leave   
   Facebook. It was, he said, very much about privacy.   
       
   "I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit," Acton said. "I made a choice   
   and a compromise. And I live with that every day."   
       
   Strangely, in defending Facebook's privacy record, Zuckerberg avoids a recent   
   pro-encryption episode. Last year, Facebook fought-and prevailed-against a US   
   government request to reportedly "break the encryption" in its Facebook   
   Messenger app. Zuckerberg also neglects to mention Facebook's successful   
   roll-out of optional end-to-end encryption in its Messenger app.   
       
   Further, relying so heavily on WhatsApp as a symbol of privacy is tricky.   
   After all, Facebook didn't purchase the company because of its philosophy.   
   Facebook purchased WhatsApp because it was a threat.   
   Facebook's history of missed promises   
       
   Zuckerberg's statement promises users an entirely new Facebook, complete with   
   end-to-end encryption, ephemeral messages and posts, less intrusive, permanent   
   data collection, and no data storage in countries that have abused human   
   rights.   
       
   These are strong ideas. End-to-end encryption is a crucial security measure   
   for protecting people's private lives, and Facebook's promise to refuse to   
   store encryption keys only further buttresses that security. Ephemeral   
   messages, posts, photos, and videos give users the opportunity to share their   
   lives on their own terms. Refusing to put data in known human-rights-abusing   
   regimes could represent a potentially significant market share sacrifice,   
   giving Facebook a chance to prove its commitment to user privacy.   
       
   But Facebook's promise-keeping record is far lighter than its promise-making   
   record. In the past, whether Facebook promised a new product feature or better   
   responsibility to its users, the company has repeatedly missed its own mark.   
       
   In April 2018, TechCrunch revealed that, as far back as 2010, Facebook deleted   
   some of Zuckerberg's private conversations and any record of his   
   participation-retracting his sent messages from both his inbox and from the   
   inboxes of his friends. The company also performed this deletion, which is   
   unavailable to users, for other executives.   
       
   Following the news, Facebook announced a plan to give its users an "unsend"   
   feature.   
       
   But nearly six months later, the company had failed to deliver its promise. It   
   wasn't until February of this year that Facebook produced a half-measure:   
   instead of giving users the ability to actually delete sent messages, like   
   Facebook did for Zuckerberg, users could "unsend" an accidental message on the   
   Messenger app within 10 minutes of the initial sending time.   
       
   Gizmodo labeled it a "bait-and-switch."   
       
   In October 2016, ProPublica purchased an advertisement in Facebook's "housing   
   categories" that excluded groups of users who were potentially A   
   rican-American, Asian American, or Hispanic. One civil rights lawyer called   
   this exclusionary function "horrifying."   
       
   Facebook quickly promised to improve its advertising platform by removing   
   exclusionary options for housing, credit, and employment ads, and by rolling   
   out better auto-detection technology to stop potentially discriminatory ads   
   before they published.   
       
   One year later, in November 2017, ProPublica ran its experiment again.   
   Discrimination, again, proved possible. The anti-discriminatory tools Facebook   
   announced the year earlier caught nothing.   
       
   "Every single ad was approved within minutes," the article said.   
       
   This time, Facebook shut the entire functionality down, according to a letter   
   from Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to the Congressional Black   
   Caucus. (Facebook also announced the changes on its website.)   
       
   More recently, Facebook failed to deliver on a promise that users' phone   
   numbers would be protected from search. Today, through a strange workaround,   
   users can still be "found" through the phone number that Facebook asked them   
   to provide specifically for two-factor authentication.   
       
   Away from product changes, Facebook has repeatedly told users that it would   
   commit itself to user safety, security, and privacy. The actual track record   
   following those statements tells a different story, though.   
       
   In 2013, an Australian documentary filmmaker met with Facebook's public policy   
   and communications lead and warned him of the rising hate speech problem on   
   Facebook's platform in Myanmar. The country's ultranationalist Buddhists were   
   making false, inflammatory posts about the local Rohingya Muslim population,   
   sometimes demanding violence against them. Riots had taken 80 people's lives   
   the year before, and thousands of Rohingya were forced into internment camps.   
       
   Facebook's public policy and communications lead, Elliot Schrage, sent the   
   Australian filmmaker, Aela Callan, down a dead end.   
       
   "He didn't connect me to anyone inside Facebook who could deal with the actual   
   problem," Callan told Reuters.   
       
   By November 2017, the problem had exploded, with Myanmar torn and its   
   government engaging in what the United States called "ethnic cleansing"   
   against the Rohingya. In 2018, investigators from the United Nations placed   
   blame on Facebook.   
       
   "I'm afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast," said one investigator.   
       
   During the years before, Facebook made no visible effort to fix the problem.   
   By 2015, the company employed just two content moderators who spoke   
   Burmese-the primary language in Myanmar. By mid-2018, the company's content   
   reporting tools were still not translated into Burmese, handicapping the   
   population's ability to protect itself online. Facebook had also not hired a   
   single employee in Myanmar at that time.   
       
   In April 2018, Zuckerberg promised to do better. Four months later, Reuters   
   discovered that hate speech still ran rampant on the platform and that hateful   
   posts as far back as six years had not been removed.   
       
   The international crises continued.   
       
   In March 2018, The Guardian revealed that a European data analytics company   
   had harvested the Facebook profiles of tens of millions of users. This was the   
   Cambridge Analytica scandal, and, for the first time, it directly implicated   
   Facebook in an international campaign to sway the US presidential election.   
       
   Buffeted on all sides, Facebook released . an ad campaign. Drenched in   
   sentimentality and barren of culpability, a campaign commercial vaguely said   
   that "something happened" on Facebook: "spam, clickbait, fake news, and data   
   misuse."   
       
   "That's going to change," the commercial promised. "From now on, Facebook will   
   do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy."   
       
   Here's what happened since that ad aired in April 2018.   
       
   The New York Times revealed that, throughout the past 10 years, Facebook   
   shared data with at least 60 device makers, including Apple, Samsung, Amazon,   
   Microsoft, and Blackberry. The New York Times also published an investigatory   
   bombshell into Facebook's corporate culture, showing that, time and again,   
   Zuckerberg and Sandberg responded to corporate crises with obfuscation,   
   deflection, and, in the case of one transparency-focused project, outright   
   anger.   
       
   A British parliamentary committee released documents that showed how Facebook   
   gave some companies, including Airbnb and Netflix, access to its platform in   
   exchange for favors. (More documents released this year showed prior attempts   
   by Facebook to sell user data.) Facebook's Onava app got kicked off the Apple   
   app store for gathering user data. Facebook also reportedly paid users as   
   young as 13-years-old to install the "Facebook Research" app on their own   
   devices, an app intended strictly for Facebook employee use.   
       
   Oh, and Facebook suffered a data breach that potentially affected up to 50   
   million users.   
       
   While the substance of Zuckerberg's promises could protect user privacy, the   
   execution of those promises is still up in the air. It's not that users don't   
   want what Zuckerberg is describing-it's that they're burnt out on him. How   
   many times will they be forced to hear about another change of heart before   
   Facebook actually changes for good?   
       
   Tomorrow's Facebook   
       
   Changing the direction of a multibillion-dollar, international company is   
   tough work, though several experts sound optimistic about Zuckerberg's privacy   
   roadmap. But just as many experts have depleted their faith in the company. If   
   anything, Facebook's public pressures might be at their lowest-detractors have   
   removed themselves from the platform entirely, and supporters will continue to   
   dig deep into their own good will.   
       
   What Facebook does with this opportunity is entirely under its own control.   
   Users around the world will be better off if the company decides that, this   
   time, it's serious about change. User privacy is worth the effort.   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge (SR41)   
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