Snowden posts old interview of Zuckerberg saying he won't sell people's content

Lima : Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and CEO of Facebook, speaks at the CEO summit during the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Lima, Peru, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016. AP/PTI(AP11_19_2016_000287B)

The infamous internet privacy crusader, Edward Snowden posted a 2009 BBC interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which he can be heard saying that he would not sell user information to the parties which users don’t want to.

In the tweet, Snowden writes:

Facebook: "This is their information. They own it"

BBC: "And you won’t sell it?"

FB: "No! Of course not."

He further urged others to share the video clip with the people who don't use Twitter.

Facebook: "This is their information. They own it"
BBC: "And you won’t sell it?"
FB: "No! Of course not."

Please help this 2009 interview of Facebook's CEO get seen by people who don't use Twitter. Here's a download link so you can pull and repost it: https://t.co/c32DmpVIig pic.twitter.com/quERsO5WZi

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 27, 2018

The video, originally posted by BBC on March 21 on YouTube, shows Zuckerberg talking to a journalist Laura Trevelyan.

In the interview, Zuckerberg when asked if the company was going to sell — or share — any of the information on Facebook, he answered, “What the terms say is just — we're not going to share people's information except for with the people that they've asked for it to be shared.”

“Everyone gets privacy settings, which has always been one of the big differentiators for Facebook, and what makes it a really different service for people. You can say, ‘I want this photo album to go to these people’ or ‘I want this note to go to these people,’ and the privacy controls on Facebook are really unparalleled by anything else.”

On further being queried, how the company was going to make money then, he replied, “The model is advertising. People's information is their own, but there are a lot of different companies and entities that want to buy advertising to take the information that they have — whatever their message is — and reach more people with it.”

The statement by Zuckerberg sounds ironical given the Cambridge Analytica fiasco and the allegations levelled against it in the ongoing probe of US Presidential Election 2016.

However, to be fair, the company had tweaked the privacy policy of Facebook in February in 2009. The BBC did not specify in which month of 2009 this interview was recorded.

Facebook, at that time, had added to its privacy policy that it would store an archived copy of user content even after the account is deleted.

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content,” it read then.

The addition at that time created a furore among its users and then Corporate Communications head at Facebook, Kathy H Chan, wrote that it was added to make things more clear and was “consistent with how other services like email work.”

“In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment,” she had added then.