{"id":398577,"date":"2019-03-08T13:02:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T12:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/can-facebook-reinvent-itself\/"},"modified":"2019-03-08T13:02:23","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T12:02:23","slug":"can-facebook-reinvent-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/can-facebook-reinvent-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Facebook Reinvent Itself?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook would be shifting its focus from publicly shared content to \u201cprivacy-focused communications.\u201d Zuckerberg\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/notes\/mark-zuckerberg\/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-social-networking\/10156700570096634\/?notif_id=1551899118427378&amp;notif_t=notify_me\">announcement <\/a>comes as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/2019\/03\/06\/tech\/exclusive-look-numbers-showing-users-leaving-facebook-by-the-millions\">new numbers<\/a> from Edison Research indicate that users have been steadily ditching the behemoth platform. According to Edison, Facebook has 15 million fewer users today than it did in 2017, with most of those losses occurring in the coveted 12- to 34-year-old group. Have years of scandal finally caught up with the company? Or have younger users simply gravitated toward other platforms? Either way, Zuckerberg is now floating a new vision for the company \u2014 one that may seem curious to those who have <a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/defending-the-digital-frontier-why-we-need-a-civil-rights-framework-for-the-internet\/\">kept track<\/a> of Facebook\u2019s very public missteps.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cWe\u2019re building a foundation for social communication aligned with the direction people increasingly care about: messaging each other privately,\u201d Zuckerberg said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/03\/06\/technology\/facebook-private-sharing-mark-zuckerberg.html\">in an interview<\/a> on Wednesday. The Facebook creator also wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/notes\/mark-zuckerberg\/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-social-networking\/10156700570096634\/?notif_id=1551899118427378&amp;notif_t=notify_me\">blog post<\/a> that he believes \u201ca privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today\u2019s open platforms.\u201d Refocusing Facebook on private communications may prove to be a hard sell, given the company\u2019s history of data breaches and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2018\/may\/24\/facebook-accused-of-conducting-mass-surveillance-through-its-apps\">surveillance<\/a>. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal to users discovering Facebook had access to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/app-permissions\/\">more of their personal data<\/a> than they had previously realized, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestar.com.my\/tech\/tech-news\/2018\/12\/24\/breaking-up-with-facebook-is-hard-to-do-but-its-possible\/\">public breakups<\/a> with Facebook have often been rooted in the company\u2019s handling of private information.<\/p>\n<p>In February, <em>MSNBC<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2019\/02\/14\/facebooks-security-team-tracks-posts-location-for-bolo-threat-list.html\">reported<\/a> that Facebook\u2019s security team mines the company\u2019s network for posts or comments that may be construed as threatening Facebook\u2019s offices or employees. Upon identifying a user that Facebook deems threatening, Facebook\u2019s security team may monitor the user\u2019s posts and direct messages, or even use the app to track the user\u2019s location. People the company has identified as threatening may be placed on what employees call a \u201cBOLO list.\u201d (BOLO is a law enforcement&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/can-facebook-reinvent-itself\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook would be shifting its focus from publicly shared content to \u201cprivacy-focused communications.\u201d Zuckerberg\u2019s announcement comes as new numbers from Edison Research indicate that users have been steadily ditching the behemoth platform. According to Edison, Facebook has 15 million fewer users today than it did in 2017, with most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-398577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}