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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is working on a feature that allows users to clear their browsing history from the site and prevent it from keeping tabs on link clicks going forward. Zuckerberg warned that the service won’t be quite as good if users take this step, as it has to relearn their history. But he added the goal is to put more power into its users’ hands to determine what they want to share.
Zuckerberg made the announcement at Facebook’s annual f8 developer conference, in which he acknowledged that 2018 has been an “intense year” just four months in.
Virtual Reality on the ‘Go’
Facebook is ready to launch a portable headset that it’s counting on to transform the geeky realm of virtual reality into a mass phenomenon. The USD 199 device, called the Oculus Go, is going on sale Tuesday. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s plan to make the headset six months ago.
Facebook Vice President of Virtual Reality Hugo Barra wears an Oculus headset.
Oculus Go is different from other virtual reality devices that require smartphones or a cord tethered to a personal computer to cast people into artificial worlds or show three-dimensional videos. The need for additional equipment is one of the reasons virtual reality, or VR, has had limited appeal so far.
Zuckerberg is counting on the Oculus Go to widen the audience for VR, as Facebook tries to deploy the technology to reshape the way people interact and experience life, much as its social network already has done.
Building “long-term relationships”
Facebook is launching a dating feature. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said to laughs at Facebook’s f8 developer conference Tuesday that the new tool is “not just for hookups” but to build “meaningful, long-term relationships.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks about a dating feature.
That is, if you want. The feature will be opt-in, meaning you have to choose to use it. Zuckerberg also stressed that the feature was built with privacy and security in mind from the start. The company has been under fire recently for possibly not doing this with some of its features over the years.
Zuckerberg also said the dating feature will not suggests users’ friends to date. This is already what other dating apps that rely on Facebook data do, such as Tinder.
Strengthening security
Speaking in San Jose, California, at Facebook’s f8 gathering of tech folks, startups and others, Zuckerberg said to cheers that the company is re-opening app reviews, the process that gets new and updated apps on its services. He also reiterated that Facebook is investing a lot in security and in strengthening its systems so they can’t be exploited to meddle with elections.
But unlike other recent public appearances, he did not start off with an apology for the company’s recent privacy scandal. Mark Zuckerberg has a fresh opportunity to apologise for Facebook’s privacy scandal - and to sketch out Facebook’s future.
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