The vision of a social network centered on owned channels

Zuckerberg's blog post on March 7th pointed out the direction of Facebook's future development, and thus attracted a lot of attention. So far, this blog post has received 19,000+ comments and 4,000+ forwards. Of course, everyone is also very hotly debated about Facebook. For example, someone is very dissatisfied with Facebook filtering out posts from friends: "I don't care about ads telling me who to vote for (I'll ignore ads like this just as I'll ignore all ads for yoga pants and slimming clothes) but could you please let me see all of my friends' posts in chronological order. You're not my mom and you don't get to choose my friends." The picture accompanying the historical article has expired Others want Facebook to return to its original intentions: "Forget ads and user data abuse. You are one of the most valuable social networks on the planet. Tell us about your mission when you founded Facebook in 2004 with the sole mission of making the world a smaller place by bringing people together and helping us connect everyone." The picture accompanying the historical article has expired The core interpretation of this blog post has been found in our previous article"Facebook to the left, WhatsApp to the right"Elaborate in detail and will not go into details here. Our translation is added below, I hope it will be helpful to everyone. ————Dividing line———— Over the past few years, my biggest focus has been solving the biggest challenges facing Facebook today. This means we need to take a stance on the important issues facing the future of the Internet. In this article, I’ll outline the vision and principles surrounding building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform. We have a lot of work to do here, but in the meantime we are being open, transparent and committed to consultation with experts across society as we develop this work. For the past 15 years, Facebook and Instagram have helped people connect with friends, communities, and interests in the digital square, but increasingly people want to connect with themselves as privately as possible. When I think about the future of the internet, I believe privacy-focused communication platforms will become even more important than the open platforms of today. Privacy gives people greater freedom, and connections between people will become more natural, which is why we build social networks. Today we’ve seen that private messaging, ephemeral apps, and “cliques” are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication, and there are many reasons for this trend. Many people prefer one-to-one or one-to-many intimate communication with friends. People are also more cautious about sharing what they record, and want to be as private and secure as possible when making payment operations. Public social networks will continue to play an important role in people's lives: helping users connect with everyone they know, discover new friends, ideas and content, and giving people a broader voice. People discover valuable things every day, and based on these valuable things, people can build many useful services. But now, users prefer private interactions and communications, so we have the opportunity to build a relatively simpler platform that pays more attention to privacy. I understand that a lot of people think Facebook can't do or even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform - because frankly, we don't currently have a good reputation for building privacy-preserving services, and the company has historically been more focused on tools for open sharing. But we've shown time and time again that we can build services that users really want, including private messages and stories. I believe that in the future communications will gradually shift to private encrypted services, where people can be confident that their conversations are secure enough and that their information and content will not be stored. This is the future I hope for, and I believe Facebook will help. We plan to build it the same way we built WhatsApp: focus on the most basic and private use case - messaging - making it as secure as possible, then build more ways for people to interact, including calls, video chats, groups, stories, enterprise, payments, commerce, etc., and ultimately become a platform that can power other types of private services. This privacy-focused platform will be built around the following principles: 1.private interaction People deserve simple, intimate places where they can clearly control who can communicate with them and be confident that no one else can access what they share. 2.Encryption People's private communications should be secure, with end-to-end encryption preventing anyone, including Facebook, from seeing what users share on the platform. 3.Reduce persistence People should feel comfortable being themselves and shouldn't worry that what they share will hurt them later. Therefore, we don't keep messages or stories longer than necessary to provide the service or longer than people want to keep them. 4.safe People should trust that Facebook will do everything they can to ensure the security of users' services to the extent that encryption services are available. 5.interoperability People should be able to connect with their friends using any of our apps and communicate across networks easily and securely. 6.Secure data storage People should trust Facebook not to store sensitive data in countries with poor records on human rights such as privacy and freedom of expression, to protect the data from improper access. Over the next few years, we plan to build more services around these ideas. The choices we face along the way mean we will take positions on important questions about the future of the Internet. We know there are a lot of trade-offs to make along the way, and it's going to take some time to actively consult with experts and discuss the best way forward, but we're not going to develop this major change behind closed doors, we're going to do it as openly and collaboratively as possible because there are a lot of social impacts at play. based on personal interactions We want to ensure that users feel private when enjoying the services we provide, provided that users are not suspicious of the person they are communicating with. We work hard to build privacy into all of our products, including publicly shared products. However, one of the important features of instant messaging services is that no matter how many contacts a user has, his personal threads and group communications remain private. As time goes by, your friends will grow, and the instant messaging service will adapt to the user's needs to maintain their intimacy. Messaging apps are different from broader social networks, where a user's friends or followers grow until the service becomes more public. This has many great uses - like if you want to tell your friends something, have your say on an important topic, find a like-minded community, follow creators and media that interests you, buy or sell stuff, organize a fundraiser, grow a business, or anything else that benefits everyone you know in a place. Still, when you combine all these experiences together, it feels more like you're in a city square than in your own more private space like your living room at home. Facebook has an opportunity to build a platform for people to interact with each other in privacy. This sense of privacy and intimacy is not just about technical features, but a feeling that is deeply integrated into the overall service. At WhatsApp, for example, our team works to create an intimate environment in every aspect of the product, and even though we've built many features that allow for widespread sharing, it's still a less public experience. When the team built the groups feature, they set a group size limit to ensure every interaction was private. When we share stories on WhatsApp, we also restrict some public content because we worry that users will question the privacy of WhatsApp when they see a lot of public content, even if it doesn't actually change the content you share. In a few years, I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the primary way people communicate on the Facebook network. We're focused on making both apps faster, simpler, more private, and more secure, including end-to-end encryption of course. Next, we plan to add more ways to interact privately with your friends, groups, and businesses. If optimized successfully, interacting with your friends and family across the Facebook network will become a more private experience. Encryption and security People expect their private communications to be secure and visible only to the sender, not to hackers, criminals, governments, and the companies that develop communications products. People are increasingly aware that more and more entities have access to their data, which not only leads to data misuse, but also leads to massive data breaches in the event of a cyber attack due to vulnerabilities. Some are increasingly concerned that technology could be concentrated in the hands of powerful governments or companies like Facebook, which could then access users' information through their own services and use it for advertising or other purposes without the users' knowledge. End-to-end encryption is an important tool in developing privacy-focused social networks. Encryption is decentralized, and it limits the services of companies like Facebook, not only making it impossible for service providers to see the content flowing through them, but also making it more difficult for others to access your information. That’s why encryption is an increasingly important part of our online lives, from banking to healthcare, and why Facebook built end-to-end encryption for WhatsApp after acquiring it. Over the past year, I’ve spoken with a number of crypto dissidents who believe crypto is the reason they stay free or even alive. Governments often make unlawful demands for data, and while we vigorously fight these demands in court, there is always a risk that we will lose the case. If we agree that information will not be encrypted, then we must hand over the data; or, if we fail to comply, our employees can be arrested. This may seem extreme, but we have real cases where one of our employees was jailed for not providing someone's private information, but we really couldn't access it because it was encrypted. At the same time, before our instant messaging services can achieve end-to-end encryption, the real problem that needs to be solved is security. Encryption is a powerful privacy tool, so bad actors are ready to take advantage of it. When billions of people use a service to communicate, some of them abuse it to do truly horrific things, like exploiting children, spreading terrorism, and extorting. We have a responsibility to cooperate with law enforcement and help prevent problems like this from happening whenever possible. We're working to improve our ability to identify and block bad apps through Activity Detection Mode or other means, and we'll continue to invest in this work even if we can't see the content of the messages. Finding the right way to protect user privacy and security is a problem that society as a whole has been grappling with. While there are still many unanswered questions, we will consult with security experts, law enforcement and governments to find the best way to implement security measures. We will also work with other platforms to ensure that the industry as a whole can do this. When the industry as a whole can create a common solution, things get better and better. Overall, I think Facebook is right to try to implement end-to-end encryption for all private communications. Messages and phone calls are some of our most sensitive private conversations, and in a world with growing cybersecurity threats in many countries and increasing government intervention, people expect Facebook to take extra steps to protect their most private data. This seems right to me, and we can achieve this as long as we take the time to put in place security systems that stop the bad guys as much as possible within the confines of the encrypted service. We've already started building on the work we've done in WhatsApp to develop these security systems, which we'll start discussing with experts this year before fully implementing end-to-end encryption. As we learn more from industry experts, we will determine how to roll out these systems. Reduce persistence We increasingly believe in the importance of preserving information for shorter periods of time. People hope that what they share won't come back to hurt them in the future, which would also be helpful in reducing the age at which information is stored and controlling the length of access. Another challenge in building social tools is the “permanence problem.” Over time, we create reams of emails and photos that can become either a burden or an asset. For example, many people who have been on Facebook for a long time will see embarrassing photos taken when they were young. At the same time, people also really like to document their lives. If all posts on Facebook and Instagram disappeared, people would lose access to the wealth of valuable knowledge and experiences shared by others. I believe there is an opportunity to set a new standard for private communication platforms - things like content automatically expiring, or being archived over time. Stories expire after 24 hours unless you archive them, allowing users to share their stories and lives more naturally. And we can apply this philosophy to all privacy services. Taking email as an example, messages can be deleted by default after a month or a year, which reduces the risk of your messages getting resurfaced and prevents them from feeling awkward later. Of course, you can change the time range or turn off automatic deletion of threads if you wish. At the same time, we can also give you a more private option, allowing you to set individual messages to expire and be automatically deleted after seconds or minutes. It also makes a lot of sense to limit how long Facebook stores messaging metadata. We use this data to run our spam and security systems, but we don't always need to keep it for very long. An important part of Facebook's solution is to collect less personal data in the first place, which is how WhatsApp was built from the beginning. Interoperability People wish they had the power to choose the services they use to communicate with others, but the reality is that this is not the case. For example, if you want to message people on Facebook, you have to use Messenger, on Instagram you have to use Direct, and on WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp. So we want to give users an option so they can connect with friends in these networks through any app they like. We plan to first enable users to send messages to their contacts using any service under the Facebook umbrella, and then extend that interoperability to SMS. Of course, this kind of service has complete autonomy for users. If users want, they can also separate accounts and do not necessarily need to be integrated and managed. Interoperability has privacy and security benefits. For example, many people use Messenger on Android to send and receive SMS texts, which cannot be end-to-end encrypted because the SMS protocol is not encrypted. However, by sending messages through the interoperability of Facebook's services, we can ensure the encryption of the message. For example, you can send an encrypted message to someone's phone number in WhatsApp through Messenger. When people use Facebook or Instagram as their social network and WhatsApp as their preferred messaging service, users can fully appreciate the convenience that interoperability brings. For example, many people who sell items on Marketplace list their phone numbers so that people can send them purchasing information, but this actually causes a lot of problems because your phone number is displayed on the social network and anyone can get your contact information, including strangers. But with interoperability, you can use WhatsApp to receive messages sent to your Facebook account without sharing your phone number, and buyers don't have to worry about whether you're both messaging on the same social media. You can imagine many simplified experiences - a person discovers an item they like on Instagram and can message the seller directly in their messaging app to get secure payment and customer support without having to use Instagram's own Direct; or when you urgently want to contact the seller When you contact your friends, you can send a message directly to the messaging app they use every day, without having to worry about whether their friends will see the message; or when you post on Facebook and Instagram, you can receive feedback from all other channels and replies from friends in one client. Now, Facebook users can already send and receive text messages through Messenger on Android, and we hope to further expand this functionality in the future, which may involve the new telecommunications RCS standard. However, before extending this functionality, we need to solve a few issues: first, Apple does not allow applications to interoperate with SMS on their devices, so we can only do this on Android. Secondly, we need to ensure that interoperability does not affect people's expectations of existing programs, after all, this encryption function is already applied to WhatsApp. finally, interoperability can create security and spam vulnerabilities in encryption systems, which means that users in Facebook's security and encryption systems may not be able to see the activity patterns of unknown applications sending messages. These are all major challenges we face, and there are still many issues that require further consultation and discussion. But if we can achieve this, we can give people more options to use their favorite services and feel safe when communicating with their contacts. Secure data storage People want to know that their data is stored securely in a place they trust. Looking at the future of the internet and privacy, Facebook believes one of the most important decisions they will make is building data centers and storing people's sensitive data. In practice, there is an important difference between providing services in a country and storing people's data in a country. As we build infrastructure around the world, we do not choose to build data centers in countries with a track record of human rights abuses and ensuring national privacy and freedom of expression. If we build data centers in these countries and store sensitive data, rather than just caching non-sensitive data, then these governments can gain access to people's information more easily. Adhering to this principle may mean that our services will be blocked in certain countries or that we will not be able to enter certain countries or regions, but this is a trade-off we are willing to make because we do not believe that storing people's data in certain countries is the basis for building Internet infrastructure and ensuring its security. Of course, the best way to protect your most sensitive data is not to store it, which is why WhatsApp doesn’t store any encryption keys, so we plan to do the same for Facebook’s other services in the future. However, storing data in more other countries is not the best solution, because doing so means that it encourages other governments to seek more access to their citizens’ data, thereby weakening privacy and security protections for people around the world. I think for the future of the internet and privacy, our industry needs to continue to insist on not storing people's data in unsecured places. next step Over the next year and beyond, we will be weighing in on many details related to these principles. Much of this work is in its early stages and we are committed to consulting with experts, advocates, industry partners and governments around the world, including law enforcement and regulators, to make the right decisions. At the same time, completing these principles is just the first step in building a privacy-focused social platform. Beyond that, privacy concepts and ideas need to be embedded into all the services we build on top of it, from how people make payments and financial transactions, to the role of businesses and advertising, to how we provide platforms for other private services, all of which require us to put privacy thinking first. What we need to note is that these most essential questions are crucial to whether we can do it. If we do this well, we can create a private platform for sharing, which is obviously much more important than if we build a more open platform for sharing and interconnection. Doing so means we need to take our own stance on some of the most important issues facing the future of the internet. As a society, we need to view this position as an opportunity to decide how we value private communications and who decides when and where data is stored. I think we should strive to build a world where people can speak and live freely with privacy guaranteed, knowing that their information will only be seen by the people they want to see it, and it won't be there forever. If we can help move the world in this direction, I'll be proud of what we've accomplished.