Facebook stands to profit from its ‘privacy’ push

But critics say the announcement obscures Facebook’s deeper motivations: To expand lucrative new commercial services, continue monopolizing the attention of users, develop new data sources to track people and frustrate regulators who might be eyeing a breakup of the social-media behemoth. Facebook would combine its instant-messaging services WhatsApp and Instagram Direct with its core Messenger app so that users of one could message people on the others, and would expand the use of encrypted messaging to keep outsiders — including Facebook — from reading the messages. Privacy International published research in December showing that popular Android apps including KAYAK and Yelp were automatically sending user data directly to Facebook the moment they were opened.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com