Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says he’ll reorient the company toward encryption and privacy | Washington Post

Mark Zuckerberg's "A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking" post is a great case study in framing, combining a lot of widely known facts -- e.g., Facebook is a fan of end-to-end encryption, despite some difficult trade-offs; Messenger and WhatsApp are primary communication apps for a lot of people; public conversations can easily get out of control (e.g., see the inevitable mostly counterproductive comments on his post...); there are lots of communication contexts in which storing posts permanently by default is not ideal; it's better to not store user data in places where it can be abused by governments "with weak records on human rights like privacy and freedom of expression" -- with a narrative that appears to be optimized for future conversations with regulators.

"The moves — outlined in broad strokes rather than as a set of specific product changes — would shift the company’s focus from a social network in which people broadcast information to large groups of people to one in which people communicate with smaller groups and their content disappears after a short period of time, Zuckerberg said. Facebook’s core social network is structured around public conversation, but it also owns private messaging services WhatsApp and Messenger, which are closed networks

The announcement, in the midst of a crisis that Facebook is facing over the loss of public trust, comes with major risks and is also likely to be treated skeptically. Zuckerberg has promised to protect privacy before, but the company has landed itself in controversy after controversy. Many governments also oppose encryption, and Facebook may end up getting blocked in some foreign countries as a result of the move, a risk Zuckerberg acknowledged in his post."

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says he’ll reorient the company toward encryption and privacy | Washington Post