A few days ago, Mark Zuckerberg shared with the world his privacy-focused vision for Facebook moving forward. I understand that it may make sense strategically for the company, but I have real concerns over the feasibility of the strategy.
Lack of trust
Facebook has been littered with scandals for the past two years. The trust between the blue brand and users isn’t particularly at its all-time high. There have been documented evidence on the exodus of users from Facebook or the significant decrease in activities. If the trust is already shaky, why would users trust Facebook with every aspect of their life by using their proposed super app? (The super app concept is similar to WeChat, which users can use to do many things while on the platform such as booking movie tickets, paying bills, transferring money to friends and families…). If we can’t trust Facebook with just daily communication, how can we entrust it with more aspects of our life? If you can’t trust a dentist to treat your teeth, would you trust that dentist if he said he could fix your eyes?
The audience
I think one of the reasons why WeChat is successful is because of the target audience. Coming from that part of the world, I can say from personal experience that we Asians tend to not care as much as Western audience about privacy. I think there is a reason why WeChat hasn’t been as successful overseas as it is in China. If it were marketed to Western audience, given its relationship with the Chinese government and Western users’ concern over privacy, I don’t think it would be a triumphant effort. Hence, to convince Western users to use Facebook for everything, the trust has to be pretty solid. It’s not there now for sure.
Regulatory hurdles
Facebook has attracted unwelcome attention from lawmakers recently. And for a good reason. Even if they had done nothing wrong, which is definitely not the case, I suspect that the road to the super app vision wouldn’t be without robust challenges from the regulatory perspective.
Essentially, it’s all well and good for Facebook to change its stance on privacy. However, the trust isn’t there. I would love to see more concrete actions to transition from a company whose more than 95% of its revenue is from ads to a company that values privacy first. I am not a believer at the moment since Facebook has used up the rope we gave them already. If they want us to trust them again, they have to do it the hard way. And I think they have to hurry as well as the world won’t stand still for them. If this is the vision that makes business sense, others will go for it as well.
If they are committed and succeed in the future, kudos to them. Until then, I choose to remain skeptical of the vision.
Minh Quang Duong 