Here in Germany online privacy is a social value, and Facebook is gonna have a even harder time from now on. I don't see it happen in the rest of the world. I give this three months: when the news cycle will have died out, for Facebook it's gonna be business as usual. Zuckerberg is in such a denial about the real mission of his creature, that I don't see how it will ever be able to steer the boat, even if he wanted to. Does he ever lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, asking himself "what the fuck did I create"? Will he ever?

Why do you think Zuckerberg is in denial? (Honest question.) Seems to me he knows exactly what he's doing.

Ok, this may sound bad, very way-out-there and not P.C. at all, so forgive me in advance, as it is my (almost fictional) speculation: I think he's in denial because of his lingering autism.

My theory is that, for Zuckerberg, Facebook has always been a perfect data machine to figure out the complexity governing social interactions. The same social interactions that have always escaped him in real life, due to his high-functioning autism.

Facebook, for the first time in history, made possible to quantify social interactions. The next step after such an enlighting discovery (it really is, actually) was to scale the analysis on a global level. Everyone - in Mark's mind - couldn't do but benefit from such formalization of social interactions. He might have asked himself: if only social interactions where as easy to analyse as a calculus problem, or as simple to formalize in a giant set of rules as grammar, wouldn't we all be better off?

Years later, he's still so autistically enamored with his own Leviathan, that he's now in denial about the evil applications his beloved monster has made possible. He's still positive that such a perfect machine can't be used for bad purposes. Sure, there have been speedbumps, but the road is still stretching towards a brighter future where technology can help us rationalize the irrational and ethereal world of mutual interactions.

Long story short: he's an autistic with a delusion of grandeur about his own creature. Such delusions are aggravated buy the shield put up around him by his fellow executives, such as Sheryl "only good news" Sandberg.

Again, this is nothing but my own literary divertissement. He might just be another silicon valley asshole executive, and that's it.