Facebook's Pivot to Privacy Is Missing Something Crucial

“But now, with all the ways people also want to interact privately, there's also an opportunity to build a simpler platform that's focused on privacy first.”In the post, Zuckerberg made a litany of promises about enhancing encryption on Facebook and Instagram, keeping servers out of authoritarian countries whose leaders seek to spy on their citizens, and reducing the "permanence" of messages or stories. “With the ability to message across our services,” he wrote, “you'd be able to send an encrypted message to someone's phone number in WhatsApp from Messenger.” In other words, end-to-end encryption will exist across three platforms, though privacy advocates have pointed out potential hurdles to this approach.Zuckerberg listed six privacy principles, but there was one glaring omission: He said nothing about how Facebook plans to approach data sharing and ad targeting in this privacy-focused future. “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,” he wrote.The changes Zuckerberg announced Wednesday will improve privacy for Facebook’s 2.3 billion monthly users. Driving people to private, ephemeral messaging could also present new challenges for media outlets trying to gain distribution on the platform and might further balkanize news consumption on Facebook.Ultimately, Zuckerberg doesn’t address the biggest trade-off: Are these changes compatible with Facebook’s fundamental business model, which relies on a steady supply of user data?