It seems somebody invited PCIS CEO Vaclav Vincalek to tell us how he really feels. He’s quoted at length here, burying and not praising Facebook, as the social-media giant tries to bring its own OS to market. It’s a lengthy and not unamusing indictment; the tale of Facebook’s unforced strategic errors is a long one.
Read Vaclav Vincalek on insecurity at Menlo Park.
“Facebook’s failure to protect the privacy of its social media users has made some skeptical that it will straddle the line of software and hardware the way Apple has.
‘Facebook absolutely has yet to prove they can do security right,’ Vincalek pointed out. ‘They just had to clean up 5.4 billion fake accounts in 2019 alone. Not 10,000, not a million, 5.4 billion. This is a company that sells people’s privacy to the highest bidder. So, can Facebook design a secure OS and develop the chips and other hardware that will go with it? I don’t see it.’”
All that said, and fanciful as some of Zuckerberg & Co.’s new projects may seem, the company has surprised us before. The future of the virtual-reality space, in particular, is hard to predict, and Facebook and Oculus have a huge lead there. The precedents for their success in this area, however, aren’t great.