Massaging egos

Zeynep Tufekci, writing for WIRED:

“It’s Time to Make Our Privacy Tools Easier to Find”, the company announced without a hint of irony—or any other kind of hint—that Zuckerberg had promised to do just that in the “coming few weeks” eight full years ago. On the company blog, Facebook’s chief privacy editor wrote that instead of being “spread across nearly 20 different screens” (why were they ever spread all over the place?), the controls would now finally be in one place.

It’s a long read but a great piece that highlights the right things. Any other company would have lost trust years ago but Facebook continues to enjoy the advantage of the ‘gravity’ effect of having 2 billion users.

My co-host Partha made the important point last week:

These products have been made by the same people who lived with the same sort of theory that [our generation] grew up with […] they understand the importance of this privacy and they’ve been building on top of this to try and massage the egos of all the newer generations […] to try and make sure they’re comfortable about it.

The more I think about this, the more spot-on this is. People who watched—ushered in, even—the social media era and understand the privacy implications could have gone about it in two ways: ensure that even those who do not understand this are protected, or help transition the vary ones into being more comfortable about sharing. Facebook has gone the latter way too often that it’s now part of its core, making it impossible to be anything else.