Image: Instagram
The future of social is private

Good morning! This Wednesday, Instagram rolls out new privacy changes, Elizabeth Warren wants Janet Yellen to lead crypto regulations, and SpaceX shakes up a tiny Texas town.
(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Source Code every day.)
Social media companies used to see themselves as open squares, places where everyone could be together in beautiful, skipping-arm-in-arm harmony. But that's not the vision anymore.
Now, Facebook and others are going private. They're trying to rebuild around small groups and messaging. They're also trying to figure out how to build platforms that work for everyone, that don't try to apply the same set of rules to billions of people around the world, that bring everyone together but on each user's terms. It's tricky.
The best indicator of where it's all headed? Young people. Social companies are racing to find ways to protect underage people on their apps, and much of what works for teens will likely end up rolling out to the rest of the platform.
Facebook's following TikTok's lead in setting accounts private by default and in taking steps toward cordoning those users off from the rest of the platform. "We are creating an additional buffer around young people," Instagram's Karina Newton told NBC News.
It's all about options. Giving users options has been frowned upon for years. The logic was simple enough: Most people won't change their default settings anyway, so the onus is on the product to get things right automatically. More algorithms, fewer settings. Less friction! Now, people are being given more choices and more tools with which to decide their experience.
As ever, execution will be the challenge here. Facebook acknowledged it's still trying to figure out the right way to verify people's age — because there's not much to stop new ones from just, you know, lying — and often, by the time someone reports a rule break, it's already too late. The only option for the platforms is to be more proactive and more careful. Doing that with young users is an obvious choice, because the stakes are so high and the relative business hit fairly low, but it'll be equally important and much harder to make the same decisions for the broader user base.
But whether it was Twitter serving the "Are you sure you want to share this article you haven't read?" pop-up or some of these privacy-focused tools that let people choose who can reach or read them, the focus has clearly shifted away from building the One Perfect System to letting users build it for themselves. At the scale at which these companies operate, that's the only way it's ever going to work.
This year, more than 50 percent of all retail sales in China are predicted to take place online—the first time this milestone has been reached globally. The digital economy and massive consumer market in China present big opportunities for Alibaba's U.S. customers.
Joe Biden said a cyberattack could spark the country's next war:
Elizabeth Warren wants Janet Yellen to take point on crypto regulation:
On Protocol | Policy: Erie Meyer, FTC's chief technologist, is targeting illegal data use:
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao suggested he may be on his way out:
Molson Hart thinks Amazon is ripping off his plush toy business:
Conductor is eyeing an IPO. But it's unclear what valuation the Brazilian payments company is aiming for, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, bike-sharing app Hello called off its U.S. public listing, joining the litany of other Chinese companies backing out of the states.
Nick Hobbs and Andrea Huey will join Twitter's Experience unit as the company acquires their subscription news app, Brief.
Anna-Sophie Harling will audit disinformation and hate speech at Ofcom. She's currently a leader at NewsGuard Technologies, which has been a Big Tech critic in the past.
Jay Parikh is joining Lacework as co-CEO and a board member. He previously led Facebook's engineering and infrastructure unit.
Karen Worstell and Amelia Estwick are heading to VMware to work on cybersecurity and threat research. Worstell previously served as a Microsoft CISO, and Estwick worked at the NSA's Threat Operations Center.
Talking about security isn't always fun. But it can be if you're listening to other people talk about it. Ruby Zefo, Uber's chief privacy officer, recommends two particularly good security talkers: K Royal and Paul Breitbarth, the hosts of the podcast Serious Privacy. On the show, the hosts chat about privacy and data security topics ranging from ransomware attacks to the Colorado Privacy Act.
The hosts dive into the practical areas of security, like what to do if you are the victim of a security breach, and dig into questions like how remote work affects privacy. You can start almost anywhere, but the most recent episode, with Logitech's Emerald de Leeuw, is a great one.
Thousands of U.S. brands trust Alibaba and work with us in the China consumer market. We give them all the advantages of going direct to consumers – control over branding, consumer relationships, and all the data and insights – in addition to access to the nearly 900 million consumers on our marketplaces.
Are you tired of explaining the tech news of the day to your co-workers every morning? Let us do the heavy lifting and refer them to Source Code.
Send them your referral link via Slack, text, email, or carrier pigeon and we'll send you your very own Protocol mug after you refer five friends!
Your referral link:*|RH_REFLINK|*
Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to sourcecode@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.