If there is no way for them to regain trust, or make people whole in any way at all, then what reason do you leave for them trying to improve transparency? What should the Zuck do, commit seppuku? Is that what would make people happy going forward?

I don't think it's Zucks fault and there's nothing he can do, but he's still going to hurt for this. It's a political and governance problem and can only be solved at those levels.

Until we're sure that intelligence agencies can't lie at senate hearings, secret courts and laws don't exist, and we're sure the government can't force CEOs to lie, we just can't be sure

And until foreigners get the same right to at least a judge overseeing a warrant we're going to see a move away from US companies no matter where in the world they are.

How do you regain trust in any relationship? Usually it's a combination of time and repeated demonstration of truthfulness. Right now, no one knows what happened behind closed doors, and the suspicion is still high.

There is no way.

The government has already shown us how they are fully capable of lying, and even worse - forcing companies under their control to lie.

Non-US company CIOs will be having long conversations around their previously hyped US/five eyes cloud based infrastructure. The stories around US (five eyes too?) companies getting free corporate intel for favours - presumably on their competitiors - won't have helped.

The sucking sound we're hearing is trust in anything related to five eyes related corporate infrastructure having any integrity at all.

Yes, it's pretty clear that the DNI lied to Congress. But it is untrue that FedGov can force companies to lie. Neither AT&T nor Verizon lied: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589012-38/nsa-surveillan...

Did you read the PRISM denials?

It was very obvious that the companies were told exactly what to say. They might not be lying in a grammatical legal sense if you parse their words, but they were clearly told by someone how to deny everything.

I've read all of them. I've written about them. They're categorical.

> The government has already shown us how they are fully capable of lying, and even worse - forcing companies under their control to lie.

The government can, and does, lie.

The government can NOT force other companies to lie. Nor is the claim that Facebook & others are under the governments control remotely supported by anything resembling evidence.

Trust is fragile, even when you're talking about the relationships and reputations of a business.

Donate his fortune to the EFF and start from scratch. Of course, that will never happen so for now, if you're concerned with security, you need to find new services to use.

>...Donate his fortune to the EFF and start from scratch. Of course, that will never happen...

Why?

Would it be legally contrary to shareholder value? I think this is a terrific idea for all of them to do. Zuck and the others appear genuinely upset from Snowden disclosure blowback and are frustrated at reclaiming their user's trust. These may be their best cred ROI. Perhaps someone experienced could organize this. EFF ...itself?(?!)

> what reason do you leave for them trying to improve transparency?

To decrease the mistrust.

Facebook hasn't been fully trustworthy for a long time, if ever. That's normal - I don't think any company really is.

Total bollocks. The statement simply discloses some more specific numbers about procedures that were never secret to begin with. The fact that a law enforcement agency could get a court order for an individual's data was never secret: it was even in the online documentation for the site!

Why is this surprising to anyone? I mean, bloody hell, anyone who's watched Law & Order should know that there are lawful procedures for these things.

There were lawful procedures for putting people onto trains to Poland. Lots of paperwork and rubber stamping.

Of course the public didn't find out what was going on in Auschwitz until the end of the war.

Where is the substance behind the statement "the trust is gone"? Has there been mass voluntary closings of Facebook accounts? Did their stock take a hit? Are their actual customers, the advertisers, even phased? I somehow doubt that we can attribute this release entirely to the fear of trust loss in their "user"base.

You're behind the times if you think people had trust in Facebook before this latest round of issues. I've had friends and family closing there accounts and not returning in a slow dribble for the last two years.

Go have a look at your friends list, see how many accounts are inactive but still listed. Most people I've done this come in around the 10-15% of contacts in that inactive state.

Mine has been growing slowly with most people not reactivating accounts. It started out around 5% a year or so ago, and was headed upto towards 15% before I just deleted a bunch of them and screwed my metrics.

Doing that should give you a metric you can start to track yourself without taking anyone else's word for it.

An interesting this I've noticed is with married couples, the less socially motivated of the pair will usually close there account and get there partner to do all the leg work for them. Generally its the husband that closes the account, but sometimes, in the case of my mother, its sometimes the wife that closes.

My mother did something novel I thought for handling family photos. She has started uploading them into a shared drop box account. I literally get notifications while I'm sitting at work that new photos have been sync'ed. I'm quite enjoying that form of photo sharing ATM.

These anecdotes are interesting, but do they address my comments? I'm talking about everybody.

> There is the substance behind the statement "the trust is gone"? Has there been mass voluntary closings of Facebook accounts?

Do you think there is a link between people "trusting" Facebook (whatever that would mean) and people not closing their accounts?

What do you think I meant by "trust"? What I believe I meant was: Sufficient assumption of good will, respect, and principle on the part of Facebook's staff such that their private messages, restricted-access content etc would stay that way in accordance with the privacy they expect living in the U.S. If their expectations are too low, and/or most people are simply uninformed, couldn't it easily be the case that people-in-general are really just no more Facebook-averse after this passed week?

I completely agree that there is a huge problem that this whole situation had to be leaked, but in all fairness to these companies I seriously doubt they'd have got anywhere attempting talks to achieve this sort of transparency before it leaked.

Distain with `Facebook trust' Hapless inane ad-feeds? Well, you too, you can reciprocate Clapper-speak. I was a youngster in the Warsaw ghetto, memories of forced labor clearing stones as a five year old, and for the past five months, I was a little girl. Watch your ad-feed adapt. Anyone I care about knows the truth, all else is noise.