Privacy First - if we take Zuckerberg's thoughts a step-further ...

A few weeks ago (March 2019) Marc Zuckerberg shared his vision of Privacy-Focussed Social Networking (see here). He considers facebook today as open platform following the "digital equivalent of a town square". He amends that people of tomorrow would like to have a "digital equivalent of a living room".

He gives interesting insights into his vision. And are in line with many points I have learned over the last two years with my own startup while ramping-up our own (privacy first) platform.

Zuckerberg believes that a "privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms". He points out that this requires

• to reduce permanence
• intimate places and private interaction as a foundation
• safety

Applying business communication on today's open platforms, "business townsquares" look like this:

Why?

The digital equivalent of a town square has a built-in stage. As "market criers" we promote ourselves and our companies - to win leads or to be discovered for our next job.

The impact of this type of communication is:

• We are flooded with a lot of content we are not interested in.
• We are mainly listening (personal or comparny related) sales talks.
• We ultimately cannot control to whom our content will be made available.
• We are completely exposed (e.g. name and company) when on that stage.

Please don't misunderstand me - we need such places.

But per design the town square is not suitable for most forms of communication - in-depth business talks, know-how exchange or confidential talks in small groups. This is why we are looking for a more "quiet" place away from the town square.

Hence there is a strong demand for platforms Zuckerberg describes as "build platforms that are focussed on privacy first".

Business Talk Lifecycle: Communication on Privacy First Platforms will have a different approach

Zuckerberg is aware of the need to transform the town square and highlights that "groups will be smaller" and compares that with the "digital equivalent of the living room".

But what does that mean for business talks? They are more the "digital equivalent of talks at a conference corner".

You meet other business people probably for the first time. Instead of your direct peers of your trusted environment you approach them, because

• they might be able to help you on a certain topic
• they might face the same issue.

Hence - digitally this requires a complete different approach to communication.

You need to find trust step-by-step. And you will not tell them all the sensible details of your issues at the beginning. Anonymity might help here, so that you don't put your reputation or the reputation of your company at risk when discussing in-depth.

Today you prefer to talk conventional here, because spoken words means: No permanence and no risk. It allows you to talk more "in-depth" and share "thoughts". Hence reducing permanence will have a significant impact on digital communication. And to our mindset towards digital communication.

The challenge: how do these people find discretely together? Sure - posting to all followers is not a suitable approach. Here you learn that communication is much more than posting, sharing and liking.

You need to implement a full talk lifecycle:

• initiating a talk
• matching people
• organizing discreet and dedicated rooms per single talk
• closing talks & removing all contents.

You need to enable partners to hide their identity and personal details per talk.

Communication beyond post, like and share

When implementing privacy first platforms you learn that there is so much more to consider.

For example: you should not open up a talk before a minimum amount of suitable partners "took a seat at the table". Here initial posts do not attract others to comment and contribute, because they are not "cried out to the public". Even worse - it creates disappointment if you invest efforts and do not receive valuable feedback. It's like standing with one or two other people in a coffee corner. After a few minutes you notice: "Well - let's head on to the next table."

Zuckerberg mentions "that [privacy first platforms are] a foundation for communities for certain interests such as buying and selling things, organizing fundraising, ...". Hence this requires to offer customized communication patterns. Example: if you want to have buyer - seller communication and want to avoid "plain sales talks" you need to implement shielding for the buyers and "anti-incentives" for plain sales communication.

Privacy-First Networks will start to merge Digital and Verbal Communication

Zuckerberg also wants to support more communication channels, such as video, audio, ... amended by certain services such as payment. I think here it is important not to distinguish between "digital" and conventional "onsite" communication. This is in line with Zuckerberg's highlighted "equivalents". Instead of separating these two worlds we need to start to merge them. Consider this example: you are going to visit a conference. You travel there by train and start talks with other visitors digitally. Your platform helps you to organize and continue talks before, on and after the event (location, time-slot).

Platforms need to proof privacy (which cannot be achieved with end-to-end encryption only)

In his vision Zuckerberg lays a strong focus on end-to-end encryption. But what Zuckerberg misses out: if you control the endpoints (app or webpage) you can extract "meta-data" there, such as your location. And you can profile from there. And that is what the users are afraid of.

Need an example of the mistrust? Please compare this the comments on his vision. Very emotional and mostly with no direct reference to his arguments. If you read his vision to the facts your will see that Zuckerbergs thoughts are really substantial.

Hence we learn that we need to offer more than technical answers. We need to win the required trust

1. by being transparent as platform provider
2. by providing proof-for-privacy and data compliance to your users.

And that can only be achieved with suitable and independant audits. We need to involve users into the decisions of the platform design. Because if we work against the user demand - we end up where facebook is today.

Hence we need different business models reflecting that. And this was one of the major lessons we had with our startup last year and why we started to adapted this to our strategy.

Conclusion

If you take Zuckerbergs vision a step further we will enter the next level of Digital Networking soon. Communication approaches are changing so that we find "our trusted corners".

Apart from "Open Platforms" we will have plattforms like ours that are privacy first. Communication patterns will adapt to the underlying use cases, such as initial fundraising talks or sharing know-how. If you start to implement such a platform you will make the same experience as we did - there is so much more to consider about communication. ANd there is so much more beyond posting, liking and sharing.

We will notice a shift in our mindsets regarding digital and verbal communication. And we will no longer separate them. Both worlds will start to merge into one.

Business models will change here to win the trust you need for such talks. Otherwise users will not use these services. This will move platforms to provide more transparency and let them implement independant, external control to provide proofs-for-privacy.

The author

My name is Alexander Ockl. 2016 I founded a startup that operates a Business Talking hub heading for privacy first communication. This hub enables users to share know-how and have in-depth talks with suitable talk partners. My idea grew when I initiated a Social Media Group here on LinkedIn for procurement - and failed to implement a know-how exchange there. I got aware of the demand and barriers when listening to the feedback of the users. Earlier - as former interim manager - I had a strong involvement mitigating reputational and compliance risks for large entereprises they had with Social Media for business use.