Zuckerberg manifesto removes reference to Facebook monitoring ‘private channels’ – Business Insider (Feb 17, 2017)

Kudos to Mashable, which first noticed that one paragraph in a 6,000-word manifesto had been changed from the original to the final version (I covered the manifesto itself yesterday). And kudos, too, to Business Insider for following up with Facebook to find out why it was removed. The official explanation is that the paragraph talked too specifically about a capability Facebook hasn’t finalized yet, but it’s at least as likely that Facebook worried it would cause major privacy concerns. The paragraph in question talked about using AI to detect terrorists in private channels, which rather flies in the face of Facebook’s commitment to encryption and protecting privacy. As with much else in the letter, I think it was likely intended to be mostly aspirational rather than specific, but the original paragraph was rather tone deaf about how such an idea would be received even in such high-level terms.

via Business Insider


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