Smash Notes
#19: What Facebook Means When Facebook Says Privacy
Following Mark Zuckerberg's big encryption pivot for Facebook, David, Joanna and Christopher unpack the privacy talk. Reporter Katie Bindley comes in to share her own stories of Facebook's creepy ad behavior, then David interviews Frank Yang, CEO of Simplehuman, about why talking trashcans are people too. The Weekly Upgrade: Christopher solves your ducking…
Notes
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The blog focused on what the Facebook staff needs to do in order to make Facebook feel private and trusted by its users. This includes changes with private interactions, reducing permanence, and feel secure about their data storage and private interactions.
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iMessage is the most used app for users.
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Katie Bindley, one of the reports, tested her theory of why ads pop up to things relevant in our lives. She started looking up random stuff outside of her targeted demographics, men's items, urns, and pregnancy. It wasn't until she downloaded a pregnancy app that she began seeing ads. Within half a day, she saw an ad about pregnancy, even when she turned off her iOS ad tracking.
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Ultimately, Facebook doesn’t need to know or keep our data in messages to know what we say, where we’re going, or what we’re buying. All this will continue to be tracked by any app we download if we give permission. Then, that data will be ingested by Facebook ads engine.
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On Instant Message, host David Pierce and his colleagues look at a Facebook plan to delete more data by default, including messages after a month or a year, and to make disappearing Stories the norm. One encouragement is governments: if a government demands the data and Facebook can say it no longer has it, Facebook is in a stronger position. They doubt the change protects users. A reporter argues Facebook may not need a year of history to target ads, because the useful signal is what you do in the moment. Airbnb, they note, judges trust from behavior on the spot. Copying a feature from Signal is not the same thing as becoming a private product.
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Frank Yang, the CEO of Simple Human, thinks you might. He believes that it's possible to take everyday objects, and make them a lot better.
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He is the founder and CEO of Simplehuman. His goal is to take everyday objects, things you never want to think about, and make them better. When things are in order and working well in your home, you feel more relaxed and calmer.
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Yang believes that since the technology is becoming smaller and more integrated, that technology used in a home should present itself at the right time, when you need it, do what you need without being tethered to a phone to command it.
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