What Facebook’s ‘privacy vision’ really means

FILE - In this Nov. 15, 2018, file photo the icons of Facebook and WhatsApp are pictured on an iPhone in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy memo is a maneuver to make more palatable the planned merging of the instant-messaging services of WhatsApp, Instagram with Facebook’s core Messenger app, analysts say. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)

NEW YORK: Mark Zuckerberg’s abrupt March 6 declaration of a new “privacy vision” for social networking was for many people a sort of Rorschach test.  

Looked at one way, the manifesto read as an apology of sorts for Facebook’s history of privacy transgressions, and suggested that the social network would de-emphasise its huge public social network in favour of private messaging between individuals and among small groups.