2012-2-23
The “A Country Cannot Become a Decent Nation Unless Newsweek Has at Least 500,000 Subscribers” series. From the February 22 issue of Newsweek.
I Have A Dream
From the Fake Zuckerberg to All Users
A Letter: If We Were to Set Down Facebook’s True Feelings About Its Settlement with Regulators over the Handling of Personal Information, Speaking in Place of Its Founder and CEO—
Daniel Lyons (Technology Editor)
How much of their personal information users share with others is something that users themselves should decide.
Facebook provides the technology for doing so.
This has consistently been our conviction.
That is precisely why we agreed to a settlement with the authorities after repeatedly receiving complaints from users and being accused by the government of deceiving consumers.
We accepted various meaningless new rules, but we have no intention of observing such things, and even if we did observe them, they would serve no useful purpose.
To tell the truth, we have no interest whatsoever in protecting your privacy.
Those of you who believe that we do are fools beyond anything we anticipated.
Of course, from the very beginning, we assumed that you were fairly considerable fools.
Just think about it.
Our business exists because we relentlessly track your behavior and sell that information to advertisers.
Surely you were not unaware of this fact?
You are not our customers.
You are the products we sell.
When we say that we will protect you, it is like a poultry farmer promising to “provide chickens with a comfortable life.”
In the end, they are only words; we do not mean them.
We will continue consistently to collect your information.
This is not a charity.
It is a business for making money.
The more money we make, the happier our shareholders become.
Therefore, we cannot stop collecting information.
Privacy Is Shit Yet Human Beings Cannot Adapt to That Change and Continue to Say
That It Is Worth Protecting
As you know, we have been accused of malicious conduct many times in the past. Each time, we initially denied the allegations, later admitted them, vowed to reform and never do it again, and then promptly repeated even more malicious conduct.
Even so, you do not abandon us.
You complain about Facebook, but you have no intention of quitting.
Why? Presumably because, in truth, you do not care about violations of your privacy.
We do not engage in aggressive solicitation or schemes to prevent you from leaving.
You continue to use our service voluntarily.
Progress Can No Longer Be Stopped
This problem is not limited to Facebook.
The same can be said of Google, Apple, and Amazon. It can also be said of Microsoft and Yahoo.
In the first place, business on the Internet is sustained by an innovative business model under which, when you use a service, you pay with your personal information instead of cash.
You do not like it?
Then, by all means, withdraw from the world of the Internet.
Will you take your complaints to the government?
But no matter how loudly the handful of eccentrics and oddballs who insist on privacy may shout, they will be unable to stop the powerful advance of this new industry.
Regulators also know that progress cannot be resisted.
That is why they let us go with nothing more than a token reprimand.
There was no fine, and we were not required to destroy the personal information we had already collected.
All that was required of us was to give users a choice if we change the way we handle personal information in the future and, for the next 20 years, to appoint some neutral auditor to evaluate our conduct.
The truth is now clear.
Privacy is shit.
It is a concept that died long ago.
Yet the human brain appears unable to adapt to this rapid change.
That is why, while knowing it to be a lie, you continue to believe that privacy exists and to say that it is worth protecting.
But you will simply have to become accustomed to it gradually.
For that purpose, we intend to continue cooperating with the authorities, accepting investigations, and presenting them with modest, merely symbolic victories.
It is troublesome, but when we consider the enormous reward that we should soon obtain, this amount of effort is trivial.
After all, through our initial public offering, our market capitalization is expected to reach approximately $100 billion.
It is all thanks to the more than 800 million Facebook users throughout the world.
It is precisely because you allow us to share your personal information (in some cases without even knowing it) that we can obtain enormous wealth.
Thank you.
May God bless you all.