
Facebook's Zuckerberg Says the Age of Privacy Is Over (2010) - ProAm
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/10/10readwriteweb-facebooks-zuckerberg-says-the-age-of-privac-82963.html
======
pacala
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, 2009

> Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric
> Schmidt's dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine
> users' privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC's recent "Inside the
> Mind of Google" special about whether users should be sharing information
> with Google as if it were a "trusted friend," Schmidt responded, "If you
> have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be
> doing it in the first place."

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-
schmid...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-
dismisses-privacy)

~~~
ironjunkie
Funny how they managed to turn around and rebrand themselves as privacy-
conscious. The reality is probably very very very far away from that.

I will give it to them, they are extremely good in PR and Marketing.

~~~
noobermin
Not sure why this is down voted. Google is the single greatest aggregation of
individuals' personal data there is.

~~~
seba_dos1
It might be because Google isn't seen as privacy-conscious at all, especially
here :P

------
scrooched_moose
Mark Zuckerberg Just Spent More Than $30 Million Buying 4 Neighboring Houses
For Privacy (2013)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-
buys-4-homes-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-buys-4-homes-
for-privacy-2013-10)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I find this part interesting:

> Zuckerberg reportedly took action after he learned that a developer wanted
> to purchase one of his neighbor's homes and use the fact that Zuckerberg
> lived close by as a marketing tactic. He started purchasing the homes last
> December. Zuckerberg will lease the four homes he just bought back to its
> current residents.

I honestly believe I would do the same. That developer sounds like a jerk.

Edit: Assuming I had the millions to do it, that is.

~~~
p49k
In other words, he was uncomfortable about someone using his personal
information for advertising purposes.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Oh, I completely get the point, I'm just saying I'd do it, too. My family, my
house, heck yeah.

------
mfringel
In general, if an executive says "The future is X", a good first translation
is "My life will get a whole lot easier if X is true."

~~~
osrec
Yes indeed. So many influential people use their influence to sow the seeds of
the future _they want_ in the public's mind. They do this by prophecising the
future, and their followers do their best to make the prophecy a reality
(often subconsciously).

------
interlocutor
Google is no better. Eric Schmidt, while was Google's CEO suggested that young
people should change their name upon reaching adulthood (as opposed to
something like a "right to be forgotten" that EU citizens enjoy today):
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-
will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-
Schmidt.html)

------
reaperducer
>Facebook's Zuckerberg Says the Age of Privacy Is Over

Awesome. So he's going to give everyone his e-mail login and password, right?
Because nobody gets privacy anymore and he's going to lead by example, for
sure.

Oh, wait. He means the age of privacy is over, except for hypocrites and rich
people who can afford to pay for it.

~~~
wilsonnb
That's an extremely uncharitable reading of this article - he says nothing
that suggests he wants everyone to publicly post their email logins and
passwords.

This kind of hyperbole is not conducive to productive conversation about
Facebook or privacy in general.

------
734786710934
Zuckerberg changed his mind on this in an interview in 2014:

"I don't know if the balance has swung too far, but I definitely think we're
at the point where we don't need to keep on only doing real identity things,"
he says. "If you're always under the pressure of real identity, I think that
is somewhat of a burden."

[https://www.csoonline.com/article/2226288/microsoft-
subnet/a...](https://www.csoonline.com/article/2226288/microsoft-subnet/as-
facebook-turns-10--zuckerberg-changes-his-mind-about-anonymity.html)

~~~
dictum
He still wants all public-facing identities tied to a real identity he can
track and analyze. That encourages even greater abandon of one's privacy, as
you worry less about tying your real name to still-monetizable private
thoughts.

------
mtgx
Could this be used against Facebook in court eventually? Like showing this as
evidence that Facebook has been _maliciously_ trying to abuse its users'
privacy?

Zuckerberg said that because that would have benefited Facebook if it became
true. It's like IBM now saying "forget Intel and transistors, quantum
computers are the future!" (because we happen to make them and be ahead of
everyone else in this).

~~~
prostoalex
The FTC investigation regarding default privacy settings and privacy settings
attributable to past posts has been settled [https://www.ftc.gov/news-
events/press-releases/2011/11/faceb...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
releases/2011/11/facebook-settles-ftc-charges-it-deceived-consumers-failing-
keep) so very unlikely.

------
brandon272
There are things about Facebook's privacy policies and respect for its users
that are perpetually in the news that it seems like they could easily nip in
the bud to garner some goodwill.

Their dark patterns around deleting your account is one example. Why not just
allow people to quickly and easily delete their accounts? Not "deactivate"
while they send you photos of your friends, telling you how much they'll miss
you. Not soft delete. Hard delete. Commit to allowing users to just leave if
they aren't finding value in the platform.

Why do they resist dealing with that kind of low hanging fruit? Do they view
offering easy opt-out functionality to present a major risk to the business?

~~~
pishpash
As a company why would you prioritize your developer's time on that? At best
it sits low on the backlog. Your performance reviews aren't based on how much
you make it easy for people to leave. The only way that stakeholders can drive
behavior is if they actually had any power, but Facebook users don't sit on
the board.

~~~
brandon272
> As a company why would you prioritize your developer's time on that?

Because as a leader within the org you're watching the company's reputation
and share value erode, and having them spend some time on those items would
gesture to the community and world that you take the public's concerns
seriously.

I'm sure they are _already_ prioritizing developer time on many different
privacy fronts, including auditing old apps to see what data they siphoned
off. (As was implied by Zuckerberg's interview on CNN)

------
georgeecollins
Says the guy who bought the houses around his house.

------
Browun
Not to beat a dead horse too much but ultimately I would believe that he was
swayed by the amount of money the company could make by sharing it. A sad
thing to see happening to all too many aspects of life!

The clip starts at around 2:30 if you want to see it:
[https://youtu.be/LoWKGBloMsU](https://youtu.be/LoWKGBloMsU)

------
oconnor663
It sounds a lot less Orwellian if we summarize it as "Zuckerberg says Facebook
should've been more like Twitter."

------
crawfordcomeaux
Let's assume the age of privacy IS over.

How might we go about deweaponizing information? Does it require anarchical
self governance and radical transparency or is there another way?

I propose one key: teaching the world to be emotionally responsible at an
individual level. Nonviolent communication provides a clear structure and set
of principles to practice to this end.

~~~
rocqua
How is information anything but the most powerful weapon. Consider the quote
"All warfare is deception". In other terms, all warfare is about information
asymmetry. To get around this, you'd need the opposing side of the deal to
share much more. The end result is a world with a lot more openness. This only
works if we turn of the outrage and shame, but that seems like it can't work
with human nature.

Really, we either accept that facebook and similar have this advantage, or we
do something to keep our information from them.

The other alternative is to run a misinformation campaign against them.
Something tor-like but with likes. That'd break the core monetization concept
of these kinds of sites though.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
Nonviolent communication is all about hacking shame, anger, blame, judgment,
criticism, etc. out of our language and minds. It sounds like teaching this to
people may be a longer, yet more sustainable path.

Hack the culture.

~~~
rocqua
In the end, people are going to judge, if only to see who is most suitable to
some task or best given something. Politics is also an invariant, people are
going to lobby to get things themselves, given scarcity, this is at the
expense of others.

These things combine to mean that it will always be problematic for everyone
to be completely open. The only way to make this a non-issue is to have all
judgements made be completely accurate, but that seems like it takes way too
much information.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
I think we have to deprogram scarcity mindsets, too. Establishing an upper
bound of minimally necessary judgment based on what is sustainable and meets
the needs of all involved over an agreed upon time might be useful, too. NVC
is founded on assumptions of abundance of resources for life. I'm not sure
what research there is on the validity of the claim, but I have found adopting
the belief biases my mind toward seeing ways to accomplish my goals with
available resources or uncommon ways to get my hands on what I need.

This reminds me of this article about using landfills for raw materials.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180323090958.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180323090958.htm)

------
commandlinefan
One way or another, bad or good, right or wrong, he's probably right. Even if
you decide to go "off the grid", you'll probably never find work in a society
that considers lack of social media footprint evidence that you're "hiding"
something.

------
pishpash
It has been known forever that Zuckerberg advocates for radical unprivacy,
i.e. technological breakdown of the barriers guarding human internals. Sort of
alluded to in dramatized fashion in the movie and given a psychological
background, but that aside, it is public knowledge.

~~~
Analemma_
> It has been known forever that Zuckerberg advocates for radical unprivacy...

Well, for everyone but him (see the other thread regarding his house)

------
dictum
Remember when influential people and institutions _encouraged_ (or outright
_required_ ) the use of a platform made by the man who said the age of privacy
is over?

------
robotkdick
Does anyone get the feeling that Facebook friendlies are monitoring posts like
this one and steering the conversation?

Yes, other CEOs may have made similar statements, but they didn't volunteerily
give millions of customers data to unscrupulous partners because that's
clearly wrong to do. It's the statement with the action that's enlightening,
not just the statement.

The lack of any sense of right and wrong within FB's leadership is astounding.

------
AboutTheWhisles
Not if you are a government.

------
brandonmenc
"privacy is over" was cool until it got Trump elected.

------
_RPM
Zuckerberg is a grimy one. Reading his FB posts make me want to throw up. He's
so full of shit.

Edit: Before this is censored. Do you honestly believe he is on a mission to
make the world more open and connected?

------
feelin_googley
"Facebook Inc. faces a massive uphill task to win back the general public's
trust, results from two separate opinion polls, reported on by Reuters, have
shown.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Sunday, just 41 percent of
Americans now trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal
information. In contrast, of the 2,237 respondents to the poll, which ran from
Wednesday through Friday, 66 percent, 62 percent and 60 percent, respectively,
believe that Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc's Google and Microsoft Corp. will
do a better job of respecting their privacy.

A separate survey released the same day by Germany's largest-selling Sunday
paper, Bild am Sonntag, delivered a much more damaging assessment, revealing
that 60 percent of Germans believe that Facebook and other social networks
have a negative impact on democracy."

Source: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cambridge-
analyt...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-
apology/americans-less-likely-to-trust-facebook-than-rivals-on-personal-data-
idUSKBN1H10AF)

Zuck: They "trust me"

Source:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg)

~~~
ironjunkie
Happy to see that the greater public understands what Facebook really is.

But we still have work to do regarding Google. They are even worse IMO. For
those two, you are the product.

Amazon and Microsoft don't have business selling your data (or at least it is
not central), you are not the product.

~~~
panarky
Bullshit.

Google doesn't have a social graph of 2.2 billion people, with all their posts
and likes.

And if you don't trust Google, then Bing and DuckDuckGo are a click away. If
you don't trust Facebook, there are no real alternatives.

Yes, there are issues with Google. But they're not in the same universe as
Facebook.

To suggest otherwise is false equivalence.

~~~
reaperducer
> And if you don't trust Google, then Bing and DuckDuckGo are a click away

I really really really really want to like DuckDuckGo, but it simply doesn't
work compared with Big G.

I switched my default search engine to DDG once again last week, and after a
frustrating week of rarely finding what i want, had to switch back go Google.

Last night was the final straw. I was trying to find out the delivery area for
a particular newspaper. All DDG gave me was irrelevant ads, links to the
newspaper's home page, outdated links to newspaper pages that are 404 now, and
links to Wikipedia and other articles about the city.

Same search query on Google gave me as the first result a link to a page at
the newspaper where I could put in a ZIP code to see if delivery was
available.

I'll try DDG again in six months to see if its improved, as I have three or
four times now. Fingers crossed.

~~~
collyw
I agree, it would almost be nice if you could allow Duck Duck Go to track some
of your searches. Google knows I am after the web framework when I type
Django. Duck Duck Go doesn't.

~~~
abraae
To be fair, time spent watching Django unchained again is time well spent.

~~~
collyw
I haven't watched it, but usually those searches are done at work.

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valeg
Not so fast, Zucc. It was a very hypocritical and self-serving claim.

