Zuckerberg Takes Off Hoodie, But Doesn’t Clarify Privacy Issues

I have yet to take the time to exhaustively review the new Facebook privacy settings, as well as various people’s musings about them, but I plan to do so this weekend. In the meantime, Miguel Helft recounts Mark Zuckerberg’s discomfort at the D8 conference yesterday:

Miguel Helft, Zuckerberg On The Hot Seat

About 20 minutes into his on-stage interview at the D8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg had to take off his hoodie, the black sweatshirt that has become his trademark and that he said he never took off.

Mr. Zuckerberg was being grilled about Facebook’s latest privacy flap, and he was visibly uncomfortable and sweating profusely. Mr. Zuckerberg was on the proverbial hot seat and he seemed to know it.

“There have been misperceptions that we are trying to make all information open,” Mr. Zuckerberg said at one point. “That’s completely false.”

The short, crisp statement contrasted with most of his other answers, which were long and rambling, prompting even more questions from Walt Mossberg, the 63-year-old conference co-host.

Mr. Zuckerberg, 26, appeared ill-at-ease with questions that he had answered deftly a week earlier when he admitted that Facebook had made mistakes by letting its privacy settings grow too complicated. At the time, Mr. Zuckerberg announced simplified controls and appeared contrite.

This time, Mr. Zuckerberg was on the defensive for much of the time, but he appeared to get some sympathy from his audience.

When Mr. Mossberg said he would move on from the privacy grilling to other topics applause broke out in the room. But others were less forgiving.

The veteran technology journalist Dan Gillmor, for instance, wrote on Twitter: “Walt Mossberg insists on an answer re FB’s unilateral privacy changes; nope, still no answer.”

I’m with Dan Gillmor on this one.