Facebook removed a line about monitoring 'private channels' from Mark Zuckerberg's 6,000-word company manifesto
On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg published a nearly 6,000-word letter about the future of Facebook.
The Facebook founder and CEO's lengthy manifesto mainly focused on Facebook's globalist mission to connect the world and develop "the social infrastructure for community" everywhere.
In one part of the letter, Zuckerberg talked about using artificial intelligence to keep terrorists and their propaganda off Facebook:
"Right now, we're starting to explore ways to use AI to tell the difference between news stories about terrorism and actual terrorist propaganda so we can quickly remove anyone trying to use our services to recruit for a terrorist organization," he wrote.
But tucked within an earlier version of the letter, which was shared with news outlets before it was published, was another line about using AI to monitor terrorists on "private channels." Mashable first spotted the change.
Here's the original version of Zuckerberg's comment on AI (emphasis added):
The Associated Press originally published the paragraph that included the mention of monitoring private channels, but its story has since been updated "to substitute a quote on artificial intelligence to reflect what was actually in the manifesto."
While it's common and expected for social networks to try and keep terrorists off their platforms, suggesting that Facebook plans to listen in on seemingly "private" conversations raises a flag about how the company's stance on privacy.
We've reached out to Facebook for an explanation of why the line was removed from the final manifesto, and we'll update this story with what we hear back.