I don’t know that Facebook ever sold itself that way. It was privacy respecting perhaps only because it only allowed college students to sign up for it, so only your classmates could see what you were doing. However, shortly after launching Zuck came out with the news feed, which told everyone whenever you looked at their profile. People hated this! The news feed in general felt like a huge privacy violation and Zuck issued his first apology. Still, they kept the news feed.
Soon they also allowed photo sharing and this is how everyone got into trouble though, as people posted photos of themselves partying and then their friends tagged them in those photos and then a couple years later, Facebook let everyone’s parents in and by that point people were trying to get jobs. It quickly became clear that maybe sharing everything on Facebook wasn’t a good idea.
Zuck promised flat out that there wouldn’t be any spying or surveillance, ever. That turned out to be a massive lie, of course (just as when Page & Brin told us in 1998 that they believed advertising was incompatible with search), but it was a big part of the draw of the early Facebook that you (seemingly) didn’t have to choose between your friends and getting spied on by Rupert Murdoch & Co over at Myspace.
I don’t know that Facebook ever sold itself that way. It was privacy respecting perhaps only because it only allowed college students to sign up for it, so only your classmates could see what you were doing. However, shortly after launching Zuck came out with the news feed, which told everyone whenever you looked at their profile. People hated this! The news feed in general felt like a huge privacy violation and Zuck issued his first apology. Still, they kept the news feed.
Soon they also allowed photo sharing and this is how everyone got into trouble though, as people posted photos of themselves partying and then their friends tagged them in those photos and then a couple years later, Facebook let everyone’s parents in and by that point people were trying to get jobs. It quickly became clear that maybe sharing everything on Facebook wasn’t a good idea.
Zuck promised flat out that there wouldn’t be any spying or surveillance, ever. That turned out to be a massive lie, of course (just as when Page & Brin told us in 1998 that they believed advertising was incompatible with search), but it was a big part of the draw of the early Facebook that you (seemingly) didn’t have to choose between your friends and getting spied on by Rupert Murdoch & Co over at Myspace.