I imagine FB is just looking for more ways to spy on the masses for their masters, now that their secrets are coming out.
The PR campaign that he's concerned with privacy is just that - a PR campaign for a company in deep dung.
30
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are liars. They care nothing about privacy. They care only about how to monetize anything and everything associated with the company.
"A single privacy-focused platform". That means collecting all their users data in one place and making it available to anyone and everyone who pays up.
If you care anything about your privacy, you would have to be an idiot to be on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
59
So you buy the competitors, strip the best 2 or 3 features from each and then shut them down. Corporate soul searching or the fake equivalent of it doesn't mean that this isn't a monopoly exhibiting blatant anticompetitive behavior.
I don't think the government should actively break them up but I do think Facebook is ripe to be beaten at their own game if we do indeed have anything like a "free market".
18
Nothing of value is ever free of charge. Zuckerberg's actions have always been at odds with his rhetoric. The sorry conclusion? FB users have made a deal with the devil.
27
New platforms are coming. FBs dominance will erode. Trust has evaporated. Already traffic is diminishing. We will go elsewhere.
21
Hmm. WhatsApp is a messaging service base on private communication, and it was lead by a Facebook veteran. If Zuckerberg is serious about pivoting Facebook to focus on private messaging, then it is a very bad sign that he's either fired Cox or can't get Cox on board with his vision.
19
They’re probably taking senior level positions elsewhere. Executives and employees change roles frequently in tech.
4
This is about taking in three other platforms and changing them so much that the ones in charge couldn't take it any more. Perhaps Zuck should stop chopping off heads and start trying to fix the exploitation of personal data issues. I don't use Facebook (one dormant account, one canceled by FB when I refuse to submit a photo to FB), but I'm sure most users don't realize they are exposing their data for easy mining.
14
Given their history would you trust Facebook to protect private messages? I’ll use email thank you.
25
I'd encourage every reader of this article and this comment to please try living a life free of Facebook for one month. I did it some years ago and haven't picked it up since.
73
@Pen Vs. Sword
I never picked it up. Hallelujah!!!
22
@Pen Vs. Sword
So did I ! I quit 4 years ago and I never picked it up!
Being free of social media means a full-filled life!
Use your time for your family, learning (your own personal development) and your hobbies. Life is sooo beautiful without social media connection, especially FB!
29
The WhatsApp and Instagram founders have now all left Facebook.
Maybe integrating Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp is not a good idea?
12
Like many companies and people in my seven decades, Facebook is going to be a victim of its own excess.
20
The rats are leaving the sinking ship, only in this case, with billions in their bank accounts.
13
@Hamilton Fish "Billions"? I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.
10
Good riddance! I'm sure their landing will be well-padded. Their contribution to society amounts to less than the sum of the coded zeros and ones that have eroded our culture at lightning pace.
25
Who cares? These are ridiculously wealthy young men who do not need a job at all. You think it is really about some existential threat to why they worked at Facebook? No. They can just leave. And have nothing to stay for in the least. Silicon Valley is winners and losers. These 2 guys have won. And moving onto other things. There is no connection. Got mine. I am out of here. This puts way to much credit on motives.
29
“Since I was twenty-three, I’ve poured myself into these walls. This place will forever be a part of me”, said now grown up Cox.
How much time will it take to bring down the walls of digital colonisation of our imaginations and dopamine triggers?
My prediction on FaceBuck&Rubles... A lot less than it took to bring down the Wall of Shame in Berlin.
7
Facebook is harmful to a stable society and deserves some heavy-handed government utility regulation so that the amount of future damage it does will be limited to the kind of folks who enjoy swallowing gasoline for fun.
If Zuckerberg and Company had any interest in society or humanity, they would have hired a few hundred more brains to filter out the garbage propaganda that sustains their misanthropic profiteering model.
Facebook Robber Barons organ-harvesting the world's human data points for extreme profit while lobbying hard against privacy laws do not benefit the common good.
Regulate them back to humanity.
Delete Facebook today for a brighter tomorrow.
51
Maybe the board would be wise to get rid of the lot of them, especially Mr, Zuckerberg.
8
Go ahead and blame those you fire, Mark. But you're the person in control and where the problem lies. Give authority to run your entity to someone who knows what they're doing or suffer the loss of wealth.
9
Hm. Yesterday's NY TimesFacebook article was about a federal criminal investigation. Today's is about senior execs jumping ship. I love coincidences.
29
Zuckerberg is integrating his apps in the face of political rumblings about “breaking up big tech”? He must feel quite threatened.
6
I'm over noted about the new direction considering what is coming in 2020. No more room for harrassment and devaluing others
3
Time to get out while the getting is good. Lots of turmoil ahead for the social media data thieves at FB.
10
For something you don't really pay for I don't understand all the negative comments. If you don'w want them to know your private life just don't sign up.
6
@drotars You haven't acquainted yourself with Facebook. The average age of members must be mid-40s or older. The teens nowadays have no interest whatsoever in FB. These middle-aged members signed up years ago, built their family stories, shared thousands of photos, and now they are so deep into it, they can't just walk away without a huge social vacuum. Facebook is the main way they share their lives. People are hooked on attention, so they san't give up Facebook.
8
Ooh boy, with the loss of more captains, maybe now the ship will sink!
7
When Sheryl Sandberg leaves and Mark Zuckerberg is no longer involved in anything outside of coding, then it'll be meaningful.
The entire topline of Facebook management is ethically compromised, to put it nicely.
---
Things Trump Did While You Weren’t Looking [2019]
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-3h2
7
“Now, Mr. Zuckerberg is barreling ahead with his shift to focus Facebook on private messaging and away from public broadcasting...”
I deleted all my social media accounts after the Times presented its investigative reporting into how Facebook (meaning Zuckerberg) sold his customers’ private information to Spotify, Amazon and Netflix. That did it for me.
And now he (Zuckerberg) expects his customers to trust his platform as a means for private messaging?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Except he won’t be fooling me twice. My little fortress is now locked up tight as a bug. For those of you that trust him with your privacy and your data, didn’t your momma teach you a thing?
9
Concerning your private, priceless data, Facebook is evil.
8
Rats/sinking ship.
6
Obviously they just need to lean in...
8
It might be useful to look at common traits and experiences of these immoral and corrupt people
Mark Zuckerberg - Harvard
Sheryl Sandberg - Harvard
Carolyn Everson -Harvard MBA (VP, Global marketing)
Monika Bickert - Harvard Law school (Developer Policy
Prior, Head of Global Policy management)
Kevin Martin- Harvard Law school (Head of Public Policy, X- Chair of FCC)
Joel Kaplan - Harvard (vice president of global public policy. Formerly, he served as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy)
Colin Stretch - Harvard Law (VP & Head of Legal)
Elliot Schrage, Harvard undergrad, Law and Kennedy school (X- VP for global communications, marketing and public policy)
Something may be rotten in Cambridge, MA
36
@MAB More likely is that Zuck reeled in his classmates and they reeled in their classmates. Harvard is not causing Facebook issues.
10
Zuckerberg is overmatched with his responsibilities at Facebook. The company has a crisis of purpose and Zuckerberg is lost. He also lied about the personal data exposure of his members to outside interests. He is a dirty player.
11
Whomever wrote that laughably fake “note to employees” should follow them out the door. These bozos can’t stop faceplanting.
4
From the outside perspective, Facebook has essentially become a necessary evil. Like monopolistic utilities of old: phone (AT&T), the Cable Company (Comcast), or your electric company (PG&E). Facebook is monolithic, untrustworthy, and distinctly consumer unfriendly monopoly of social media.
Who the heck would want to work there now? No surprise they are losing talent.
3
Why do people bother with this toxic app any longer? I deleted this nonsense long ago and my life has only improved. FaceBook is a loser.
14
I don’t believe for a moment the new direction of Facebook is towards privacy. A revamp of messaging towards something less open or public, TBD. There is no technical need to unify systems. They are running just fine separately. Facebook, Instagram and WA on one platform is about FB gaining greater access and insight into individual user behavior and data to enable faster, greater money-making. And also surely to push more taggetted advertising onto Instagram and WA. This isn’t some cleanup to rectify FB’s transgressions against individuals and the country. More like getting ready to go 10X in the next phase of the plan to have everyone, everywhere experience online living through Facebook Inc.
15
Good these people are leaving. Zuckerberg is actually trying to do the right thing now, and if these people are only concerned about their growth rates then they don’t seem to grasp the message the public and markets are sending Facebook.
Social media needs to think of society first, growth second.
1
@M
The CEO is trying to do the right thing finally. Really ?what planet have you been living on . This CEO has been lyning to the citizens of the world ,countimg his dollars in his private secure villa on his own island. He is a fake American working with China the Saudis he is a pathetic American oppressing people who are seeking freedom.
This liar to our democratic country had been selling our privacy to third parties and making money off of us. So his companies are a cancer to the world,
Zuckerberg ‘s new community is one that he isn’t held accountable for. He can let hate ,racism fester because no one but the evil groups will see the information, and the security forces won’t be able to monitor the hate. How is that helping the world? It doesn’t but he has developed a hate site and tries to play it off,
Maybe the executives have had enough of the liar and want out before more legal problems are on there doorsteps.
Facebook leadership is nothing but lies ,making money off the backs of hard working citizens
Can’t wait for Ms Warren to cut these Anti Democratic companies up. Selling our freedom to dictators most Americans can understand that.
Wonder what Facebook will do when not one democrat accepts their monies, we can’t be brought again .
11
Zuckerberg would be well advised to use the opportunity presented him by these departures to hire experienced adults to replace them.
3
“While it is sad to lose such great people, this also creates opportunities for more great leaders who are energized about the path ahead to take on new and bigger roles.”
The nothingness in these PR statements tells us nothing much is going to change.
How is Facebook going to make money with privacy and non-sharing?
10
To put the breakup of Facebook in perspective, an analogy that comes to mind is if the owners of the yellow pages also owned the circuits, and monitored all the calls and sold the contents of those conversations to anyone who paid enough money.
The above analogy provides a good roadmap to how to best partition the platform into distinct entities that could be regulated at appropriate, legally defined, critical points of intersection.
9
“For over a decade, I’ve been sharing the same message that Mark and I have always believed: Social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral,” Mr. Cox said in his post. “As its builders we must endeavor to understand its impact — all the good, and all the bad — and take up the daily work of bending it towards the positive, and towards the good.”
What nonsense-speak! Yes, the history is written. FB is responsible for the deaths of thousands and some activities it enabled (and made money off of) can’t be classified as genocide (e.g., Rohingya in Myanmar). And no, it hasn’t “bent towards the positive.” The perverse incentives to make money continue to dominate - that’s the fundamental contradiction with how FB operates today. Combining the various apps will not address that. It will give FB more power over your every interaction to increase the value of your data.
32
“Facebook is undergoing a tricky transition as it tries to recover from two years of scandals over data privacy and disinformation.”
Is disinformation a euphemism for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg’s years of lying to Congress and the public?
36
Time for some entrepreneurs to start a competitor to WhatsApp from the ground up and mitigate the negatives. Mainly, remove the perverse incentives to make money...
16
@PK There is an alternative: Signal. Open-sourced, end-to-end encryption, not monetized. Ask any techie involved in cybersecurity -- every one will tell you dump WhatsApp and go to Signal. Downloading and transitioning is a snap.
9
It is scary when a "founder" leaves after nearly 13 years...I am greatly annoyed/concerned as Instagram combines with FaceBook...I don't want my Instagram fed into FB...but it is. I also am concerned about Whatsapp and privacy...I've already left google for duckduckgo...I need alternatives to the others...
11
They both left with golden parachutes and NDA’s. Facebook needs to be regulated. Soon. Before they do more damage to Americans.
33
Facebook is not a "social" media platform. It is a media kaleidoscope that brings together social, news/info/data, opinion, graphic arts, video and about anything and everything you can imagine that can be rendered into bits and bytes into the scope of the "news" feed.
It's a great tool, but it needs to figure out how to keep bad actors from manipulating its users to the nth degree.
9
Facebook can be a good thing or negative depending how one uses it. I might go on it once a week to see how a few friends are doing. So the direction it's going in sounds more in line as to how I'm already using it. Low key. If you don't like FB don't use it. Obviously, a whole lot of people Do like it and find it useful.
Social media platforms can only be manipulated unless you are an uniformed "mark" at the County Fair. I stayed off of Social media during the last Presidial election and read old school newspapers. But even old newspapers didn't always get the story straight.
3
Not sure this really means anything. Some of the very people that are leaving are the same ones that built the egregious platform that exists today. I shed no tears for them. One could argue that this is a GOOD THING they are leaving... Unfortunately, until Sandberg/Zuckerberg are ousted FB will continue it's decline. Zuck's "privacy manifesto" is just more PR obfuscation.
64
Has no one heard of planned obsolescence? Facebook has outserved its usefulness; it is little better than a rudderless ship under the current leadership and business model. The bell has tolled; and the Feds are at the gates. Cease operations and move on. There's a plot available in the social media graveyard next to MySpace with Facebook's name on it.
101
Mark Zuckerberg may look naive or may have cultivated a persona that he cares about the "community." However, the truth is that he is as manipulative as ever as he was during his college days. He is cunning and all he really cares about is making money through selling FB's user data to advertisers or "other" interested parties.
I bet as soon as an alternative social media platform that respects users' privacy becomes available, FB will go out of business. This is a huge opportunity for a start-up willing to take on FB.
118
@JC Facebook IS going out of business, and that privacy-oriented social media is already here: it's the "chans." 4chan, 8chan, etc. They're already far more influential than FB ever was.
8
I remember, many years ago, in Facebook's infancy, looking over a friend's shoulder as she told me about this wonderful way to connect with people. She was totally innocent of what was happening. She owned and loved dogs and was a great cook. She thought it fabulous that she saw ads for dog food and cooking shows and markets. As far as she was concerned, it was perfect.
I asked her if she realized that 'they' already knew all about YOU ? I had to explain the Big Brother concept and how now she was being shared out and sold to the world.
I have visited Viet Nam many times on business. Everyone in my contact's office, 100% young and tech savvy, still have no understanding of how they can be manipulated by a service that they think is so user-friendly. If the Russians want to move in, as it seems they already have, nothing short of shutting it down is going to prevent the world from being manipulated by forces out of their control. As far as millions of global FB addicts are concerned, it is all wonderful.
Zuckerberg is laughing all the way to the bank.
76
Never really got into social media. Was never much of a follower. Pretty glad about that now.
4
@Tim
Seeing ads that are more relevant instead of less relevant. The horror! The horror!
Watch a football game on TV and see beer and truck commercials. The horror! The horror!
3
Sheryl Sandberg COO is a drain on the organization. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn later that some of the top talent leaving is because of Ms. Sandberg's controversial/poor decisions and management style.
Zuckerberg needs to clean up his act and find out the truth as to why these individuals are leaving. My guess id he'll find one of the answers to this problem by looking into the office next to him.
27
@cherrylog754
Sheryl S is a constant thorough the years of their employment. I’d be looking at what’s shifted for both execs to be leaving now.
....The most likely reason being the one nominated.
‘Drain’ sounds vague and uncompelling- on what basis? Without specific cause these comments lend themselves to the view that it’s convenient to blame the only reason wearing a skirt.
The departing executive team has realized that Facebook's Chief Executive has no interest in changing anything of value. They have outgrown this dangerous and stultifying nonsense. I hope that Mr. Cox, at the very least builds fierce competition for a newer, better, and safer Facebook. What a novel idea in our capitalist oligarchy. We have only just begun.
44
@purpledot
" I hope that Mr. Cox, at the very least builds fierce competition for a newer, better, and safer Facebook."
I would be surprised if Mr. Cox didn't have a non-compete clause in his employment contract.
14
@W Non compete clauses are not enforceable/legal in the state of California.
12
@GK In some limited cases they may be. There's been at least one ruling that when the employee is represented by an attorney while negotiating the employment agreement, a noncompete clause can be enforced.
1
Facebook is a platform that was weaponized by the Russian Federation and trained on our Democracy both guns blazing. How can an application that permitted the most sucessful foreign attack on our Democracy in 200 years be considered " positive"?
147
Because it reminds us, "Don't believe everything you read." Just because something is on the internet, doesn't make it true. Or have we already forgotten this.
3