Facebook CEO Pokes Fun At Privacy Record

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, cracked an awkward joke about his company’s privacy track record–and nobody laughed.

Zuckerberg gave the keynote address at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference on Tuesday. With an “amused” look on his face, according to Business Insider, Zuckerberg said, “I get that a lot of people aren’t sure that we are serious about this. I know that we don’t exactly have the strongest reputation for privacy right now, to put it lightly.”

But Zuckerberg went on to say “the future is private,” a major backtrack from previous statements the multibillionaire CEO has made about privacy.

“As the world gets bigger and more connected, we need that sense of intimacy more than ever,” Zuckerberg said.

“It’s an extraordinary statement, given the messenger. Facebook has been mired in one privacy scandal or another almost its entire life, and the last two year have been a non-stop rollercoaster of red-hot crises. But the 34-year-old billionaire is leaning hard into a so-called pivot to privacy,” Business Insider reports. “This revolves around six core principles: Private interactions, encryption, reduced permanence, interoperability, and secure data storage. But the way Facebook defines privacy isn’t the way ordinary people might understand it.”

Facebook is expected to roll out an updated design this month, which will include updated privacy settings.