Mark Zuckerburg, the CEO of Facebook, announced a new plan to introduce a "truly private" messaging system through Facebook. Famously known for leaking private information of their users, Zuckerburg wants to start to change this narrative. He believes amping up the security in messaging would help the company more than hurt it, not only in the eye of the public but also in their stocks.
This new way of communicating through the app would encrypt the messages between users, an encryption that even Facebook could not read. They also seem to be taking notes from Snapchat, in which messages automatically disappear.
Even with all these promises, users are staying skeptical. Facebook users are still skeptical of the app using their private messages to target ads on their page, as they have already found happens on Facebook Messenger. Along with the skepticism surrounding the privacy promised, other critics are worried that these private messages may allow false news and rumors to spread. According to CBS News, Zuckerburg noted this as an "inherent trade-off" between security and safety, as these messages would be encrypted and unreadable.
Personally, I believe that this level of privacy is not possible, especially after all of the scandal Facebook has faced itself. To trust that all of the messages would be private and encrypted so that they could not be read by Facebook itself would just seem naive. Although I hope this plan works, I will not be waiting around for it.
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