Feb 17, 2017
The part Zuck didn't publish: monitoring private messages
- Kia Kokalitcheva, author of Axios Pro Rata
On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a lengthy manifesto detailing his view of the world and important global shifts. However, the final version omitted a mention found in a previous draft about monitoring private messages, according to Mashable:
The long term promise of AI is that in addition to identifying risks more quickly and accurately than would have already happened, it may also identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all — including terrorists planning attacks using private channels, people bullying someone too afraid to report it themselves, and other issues both local and global. It will take many years to develop these systems.
Why it matters: As Mashable points out, it's ironic that Zuckerberg praised Facebook-owned WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption in the very same letter while originally also mentioning monitoring messages. But this original passages should also raise questions given growing concerns that the massive data Facebook has about its nearly 2 billion users could turn it into Big Brother if in the wrong hands.