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Facebook is keeping quiet about its wildest ambitions as it tries to show it can be trustworthy and mature

facebook ceo mark zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the F8 Facebook Developers conference on May 1, 2018 in San Jose, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

  • Facebook is staying quiet about its crazy vision for the future.
  • At its F8 conference in previous years, it has discussed how it is building science-fiction-esque mind-reading tech.
  • But in 2018, bruised from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company avoided the controversial subject entirely.
  • Instead, its focus was on ensuring its products keep users safe — but it still made a slew of new announcements.
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SAN FRANCISCO — At Facebook's annual F8 conference in 2017, attendees were greeted with a wild vision of the future and how Facebook was rushing to build it — from mind-reading to technology that lets you hear through your skin.

But chastened by months of scandals, Facebook's 2018 F8, held earlier this week, was a more subdued affair.

Sure, Facebook discussed subjects that, by most other companies' standards, are practically science fiction, including the future of virtual reality and avoiding biases in artificial intelligence. But it has reined in its its wilder impulses at it attempts to put its best face forward to the world, and to demonstrate that it is still a trustworthy and responsible company.

For the last few months, the conversation around Facebook has centered on successive crises, from its use in the spread of misinformation and Russian propaganda to the misappropriation of tens of millions of its users' data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

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Taking to the stage to open F8 on Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the same apologies he has been making ad nauseam. But he also made clear that Facebook won't stop launching new products and features just because it needs to fix its existing ones. "We will keep building," he declared to a cheering crowd of developers.

There was a bevvy of new announcements around products and features, including a dating service, augmented reality features in Instagram, new analytics tools, and tools to help big businesses use WhatsApp.

But the focus of the event was squarely on safety and responsibility: How can Facebooks apps and services ensure "meaningful" connections and identify any negative unintended consequences. "We could build technically perfect, secure products and bad things would still happen," chief security officer Alex Stamos observed in a speech on Tuesday.

This meant the smart-speaker Facebook is reported to be developing — a would-be rival to the Amazon Echo or Google Home — was a no-show, despite earlier rumours that it would be unveiled at the conference. Announcing an always-recording microphone that lives in customers' homes probably isn't the wisest PR move after a bruising privacy scandal, after all.

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And it meant that Facebook's stranger and quirkier projects were nowhere to be seen. Back in 2017, Regina Dugan, the then-head of Facebook's experimental projects lab Building 8, revealed the social networking company has 60 people working on mind-reading tech, and is also developing far-out tech that lets people hear through their skin.

Facebook 10 year roadmap
Facebook's 10-year roadmap, as seen in 2018. Facebook

In contrast, the day two keynote on Wednesday was a more grounded affair — announcing new AI development tools and teasing advances in virtual reality hardware technology.

Facebook isn't giving up on its futuristic ambitions. At F8, Zuckerberg reiterated the company's commitment to its 10 year roadmap, which (if you look closely) still includes BCI: "Brain computer interfaces." 

But smarting from a Congressional hearing and a deluge of bad press, Facebook seems to be trying to get its house in order and convince the public of its contrition before it starts shouting about its sci-fi visions for the future again.

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