Facebook unveils redesign plan as it tries to move past privacy scandals

Move is the most visible signal of how the social media giant is starting to emphasise private communications.

Mark Zuckerberg declared in March that he planned to shift Facebook away from being a public town square and to private communications. Now, the chief executive is rolling out the first in a series of changes to achieve that.

On Tuesday at its annual developer conference, Facebook unveiled a redesign of its mobile app and desktop site. The revisions add new features to promote group-based communications instead of News Feed, where people publicly post a cascade of messages and status updates.

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With the changes, users can more easily message one another and share news and other items with members of private groups on the site, the company said. Zuckerberg is working to integrate and encrypt Facebook’s different messaging services, which include WhatsApp and Messenger. The company also plans to continue emphasising its Stories product, which allows people to post updates that disappear after 24 hours. And it unveiled a spare, stark white look for Facebook, a departure from the site’s largely blue-tinted design.

The features, when combined, “will end up creating a more trustworthy platform,” Zuckerberg said in an interview. “Everywhere you can see and connect with friends, you’ll be able to see and connect with groups; it’s going to be woven into the fabric of Facebook.”

The redesign is the most tangible sign of how the privacy scandals and user-data issues that have roiled Facebook are forcing change at the company. The social network has spent the past three years grappling with criticism that it did not properly protect its users’ information, that it spread false news and other toxic content and that it was used as a tool for election interference. Last week, it said it expected to be fined up to $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations, in what would be a record penalty against a technology company by the United States.

Facebook is also playing catch-up with people’s shifting social media behaviour. Questions about the benefits of social media and more recognition of its ills have prompted many to turn toward methods of private communications, such as messaging apps.

“By far, the three fastest-growing areas of online communication are private messaging, groups and Stories,” Zuckerberg said. “In 2019, we expect the amount of Stories that are shared to outnumber the amount of Feed posts that are shared.”

Eventually, he said, Facebook plans to roll out dozens of small product updates across its four main apps of WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook itself.