Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg did not impress in a speech delivered at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany last January 20. In the face of several Facebook privacy disasters, Sandberg talked about all the right things but did not explain how her vision of data privacy could coexist with Facebook’s business model.
Steven Erhlich discusses Sandberg’s speech and Facebook’s future in this article published in Forbes:
…COO Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged that the company “understands the deep responsibilities we have” and that “we need to stop abuse more quickly and do better to protect people’s data”.
In order to achieve these laudable aims she outlined five things that the company is doing to help regain trust, including: Investing heavily in safety and security, protecting against election interference, cracking down on fake accounts and misinformation, making sure people control their information, and significantly increasing transparency.
However, despite these laudable statements it has been repeatedly argued over the last few years that Facebook’s advertising-driven operating model is fundamentally irreconcilable with user privacy and control.[…]
It is often at this point in the story that people wonder if the company would ever offer a paid-version of the service that is free from ads. However, when he testified in front of Congress last year CEO Mark Zuckerberg ruled out such an offering in the short term, justifying the decision by saying that charging for Facebook could disenfranchise less-affluent populations. He further articulated that even if the company offers a paid model in the future, there will always a free version of the service. This could be construed as suggesting that privacy is something that is only available to the well-off.
