Facebook’s shift to privacy is just a play on emerging market dynamics

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook’s family of apps will be pivoting to privacy and focusing on enabling private, fully encrypted messaging in his seminal 3,200-word pledge for change. Interestingly, this announcement comes a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal was first reported by the media. At first glance, skeptical critics argue that nothing will change. They’ll say that Facebook is here to monetize its experience no matter how Zuckerberg changes up the platform’s experience. Moving towards privacy-focused communications may seem like a backward play for most marketers. But, it’s not exactly a defensive move given that ephemeral messaging is already used on Instagram and end-to-end encryption is deployed on WhatsApp. The changes are coming hard and fast. And, they show that Zuckerberg is offering up a smarter, more nuanced perspective to Facebook in a new age of privatization.