On March 6, Facebook, Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg published an essay, “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking,” that amounted to an abrupt about-face for a company that has grown incredibly wealthy through the unlimited stream of personal data.

“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever,” Zuckerberg wrote. “This is the future I hope we will help bring about.”