Posted on 06/10/2019 5:15:49 AM PDT by ShadowAce
In the future, Facebook won't be a social-media site.
Facebook is under a lot of scrutiny and pressure at the moment. It's accused of helping foreign actors to subvert elections by using ads and fake accounts to spread lies—in the US, for example—and of acting as a conduit for terrorism in New Zealand and elsewhere. There are calls to break up the company or at least to rein it in.
In an evident attempt to head off those moves, and to limit the damage that recent events have caused to Facebook's reputation, Mark Zuckerberg has been publishing some long, philosophical posts that attempt to address some of the main criticisms. In his most recent one, he calls for new regulation of the online world in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability. The call for data portability mentions Facebook's support for the Data Transfer Project. That's clearly an attempt to counter accusations that Facebook is monopolistic and closed, and to burnish Facebook's reputation for supporting openness. Facebook does indeed use and support a large number of open-source programs, so to that extent, it's a fair claim.
Zuckerberg' previous post, from the beginning of March 2019, is much longer, and it outlines an important shift in how Facebook will work to what he calls "A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking". Greater protection for privacy is certainly welcome. But, it would be naïve to think that Zuckerberg's post is simply about that. Once more, it is an attempt to head off a growing chorus of criticism—in this case, that Facebook undermines data protection. This is the key idea:
I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever.
Although that may sound like unalloyed good news for Facebook users, it's also a big plus for Facebook. Since end-to-end encryption will be employed, the company won't be able to see what people are sharing in their private chats. That being the case, it can't be required to police that content. If Facebook can bring about that "shift" to private messaging, it will reduce the public and political pressure on the company to try to check what its users are up to. The big problem with this approach is that it will not be possible to monitor who is sending what, and so the authorities and other observers will lose valuable insights about what kind of disinformation is circulating. There's another key driver of this much-vaunted emphasis on privacy and encryption. As Zuckerberg writes:
We plan to build this 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, including calls, video chats, groups, stories, businesses, payments, commerce, and ultimately a platform for many other kinds of private services.
Zuckerberg needs to make his services "as secure as possible" not so much to protect users' privacy, as to engender enough confidence in them that people will be willing to trust Facebook for everyday financial activities. That is, he wants to turn Facebook from a social-media site to a platform running every kind of app. Facebook is running out of people it can easily add to its network, so it needs to find new ways to generate profits. Taking a cut of every e-commerce transaction conducted on its new secure service is a great way of doing that.
Although a bold vision, it's hardly an original one. It's precisely what the Chinese internet giant Tencent did with WeChat. Initially, this was just a way to exchange messages with small groups of friends and colleagues. In 2017, Tencent made it possible to run "Mini Programs" on its platform. Wikipedia explains:
Business owners can create mini apps in the WeChat system, implemented using JavaScript plus a proprietary API. Users may install these inside the WeChat app. In January 2018, WeChat announced a record of 580,000 mini-programs. With one mini program, consumers could scan the Quick Response [QR] code using their mobile phone at a supermarket counter and pay the bill through the user's WeChat mobile wallet. WeChat Games have received huge popularity, with its "Jump Jump" game attracting 400 million players in less than 3 days and attaining 100 million daily active users in just two weeks after its launch, as of January 2018.
Today, WeChat has more than one billion monthly active users, and it's effectively the operating system of Chinese society. With his shift to a "Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking", Zuckerberg evidently aspires to turning Facebook into the operating system for everywhere else.
That is a huge problem for open source. Even though Linux underlies the billions of Android phones in use today, there is precious little sign of free software running on them. As people start to install Facebook Mini Programs—or whatever Zuckerberg decides to call them—on Facebook, running on Android, the fact that everything depends on Linux becomes even more irrelevant. Whether the new Mini Programs are open source or not, Facebook's platform certainly won't be, no matter how much Zuckerberg loves free software. Facebook will become the new Windows, with the difference that swapping in GNU/Linux instead of Windows is straightforward; doing the same with Facebook's new platform, will not be.
The community could doubtless come up with a better Facebook than Facebook—after all, the open-source world has some of the best coders around, and they love a challenge. It probably would be a distributed, federated system with privacy and security built in. But the technical details really don't matter here. The hard part is not crafting a better Facebook, but convincing people to use it. Network effects make breaking Facebook's grip on social media incredibly hard. Once Zuckerberg has established Facebook as a complete platform, and people use it routinely and reflexively all the time they are awake, it will be even harder. What role will open source have then?
There is zero chance Facebook’s “encryption” would also keep out Facebook and the “authorities”.
People in America who think socialism is great and wonderful are just stupid to what happens under socialism. They have not done their homework regarding this crap. When they finally see what the results of this murdering system does, it is too late. Why the hell they do not simply look at North Korea or Venezuela is beyond me. Wake up fools before you wind up like both of these nations. Sanders, Hillary, any of these dimwit party members ALL will result in a dictator type rule. I think the dimocratic party is looking to become dictators. If, and that day will come sooner rather than later, the dims get all three, the WH and both houses of congress, I will not be surprised that they immediately start changing everything as fast as they can. They will start with guns and the electoral college (states have already started this) and move quickly to change everything. They will move on to the supreme court, by adding justices so they can put in more liberals and out number conservatives on the court, maybe adding two to four liberals on the court to out vote the conservatives. It is coming people. Whether you are a believer in the Bible or not, EVERYTHING the Bible has predicted to this point has come true. All of it. And more is prophesied. And all of it will come true. The United States will not be here as founded in the final days. The ONLY way out of this mess for everyone is belief in Jesus Christ. THE ONLY WAY. If you don't know Him, you are running out of time. Take another look before it is too late.
Now, as others have pointed out - there is no way, absolutely no way fb is *not* building back doors into their "encrypted" communications. They *have to* see what users are doing. Selling demographic and advertising info is just far too lucrative a deal for them to pass up. They'll have to be careful and subtle about it, but if they continue to get revenue by selling information...well that info has to come from somewhere - it comes from monitoring what users are doing/saying/reading/etc.
EXACTLY.
Facebook's entire premise is fundamentally dishonest, and they're certainly not going to suddenly become honest. They misrepresent who and what they are, what they do and why they do it, and they push a social/political agenda that is full of lies. It's what they do.
I'm not worried about Open Source and Linux. They will do just fine. They exist primarily in a different environment of serious computing.
If Facebook becomes a platform for some sort of "mini-apps", it will be a much bigger threat to Windows, than to Open Source and LInux. Windows is struggling, and has no grip on the mobile market. Windows is subject to Fudd's First Law of Opposition: "If you push something hard enough, it WILL fall over." **
Good Lord. Facebook as the New Windows. What a freakin' horror-show that would be.
** Firesign Theatre
Thanks to ShadowAce for the ping!
yeah, this article is just a bucket of disconnected tripe with respect to the open source title. From the title I expected to read an essay regarding the trap in FaceBook open source licensing, or how FaceBook is undermining open source projects by keeping forks closed, or some other sensible topic.
Zuckerfyck is the LAST person on the planet to talk about privacy.
Agreed. It could be done using GPG/PGP-type public key encryption where the private keys reside on the user's device, but it won't be. The government doesn't believe you have any right to privacy, and Facebook doesn't either for that matter.
p
Doesn't matter if it would work or not (and no, it wouldn't). It's not what conservative American normal people want, and we were here first. We physically OWN the country and to force something like that on us is theft. Plus, there are collectivist shitholes all over the place for those that want that to emigrate to. Why do they feel the need to steal our unique bastion of lower-fascism instead?
There are several countries they could move to and have everything they desire. Nations like the Soviet Union, Red China, Red Cuba, Red Venezuela, and Red North Korea, all come to mind. I would even toss in my 50 cents to help pay their way there. The stupid fools think they are going to make socialism some how work here even after it has severely failed everywhere it has been tried, IE. the Soviet Union and especially Venezuela most recently. The ONLY reason it did not fall in Red China is because they accepted capitalism as their monetary way of doing business and not the socialism way of life. Had they done it the same as those two, they would have collapsed also.
The Meta-data probably won’t be encrypted: just the content. One can learn a lot from the meta-data. Need parts of the content for advertisers? Just incorporate it into the meta-data that isn’t encrypted...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.