The words "Facebook" and "privacy" don't exactly go together, unless you're talking about the social network's lack thereof, but Mark Zuckerberg wants to change that.
In a Wednesday note, the Facebook CEO outlined a new plan to build a "privacy-focused" messaging and social networking platform.
"I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever," Zuckerberg wrote. "This is the future I hope we will help bring about."
The "simpler" platform Zuckerberg envisions will, like WhatsApp, be end-to-end encrypted to keep messages safe from prying eyes. The focus will be on private as opposed to public interactions, and users will "have clear control over who can communicate with them," he went on to say.
Messages and stories will be impermanent, so people don't "have to worry about what they share coming back to hurt them later." Facebook will do everything "within the limits of what's possible in an encrypted service" to keep users safe. People will be able to use any Facebook-owned app to communicate across networks. Sensitive data will only be stored in countries with strong human rights track records.
That's a grand vision, and it will take time. Facebook plans to "rebuild" its services around these principles over the next five years, Zuckerberg said.
This idea might seem laughable to those who have been following the company's many recent privacy scandals, but Zuckerberg said he's ready to prove doubters wrong.
"I understand that many people don't think Facebook can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform—because frankly we don't currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services, and we've historically focused on tools for more open sharing," he wrote. "But we've repeatedly shown that we can evolve to build the services that people really want, including in private messaging and stories."