COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 02/05/2019
Mathew Ingram
The world got a preview of what the future might look like for Facebook in an essay CEO Mark Zuckerberg published in March. In it, he explained his vision was of a network of private—even encrypted—Facebook groups, as well as a private Messenger app, and other features. “I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms,” he said. This week, journalists got a little more detail on how this future will take shape at the company’s F8 developer conference. But even the giant screens shouting, “The future is private” couldn’t hide the fact that this is a pretty fundamental shift in the way Facebook has operated so far. It is, in fact, a complete reversal.