“What is the price of trust? Or, to put the question another way, what is the cost of becoming known for doing things that don’t match your words?” That question could easily apply to America in 2018. But in this case, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos is referring to a much larger nation state in which billions of us are citizens. And it’s been a long year for that global empire. Which brings us to another question: How Much Trust Can Facebook Afford to Lose? It’s a question of trust, but it’s also a question of how much the average user cares about Facebook and other tech companies playing fast and loose with their privacy. In 2018, we confirmed that Facebook treats privacy like an obsolete value and that journalists view privacy as a vital interest. In the coming year, we’ll find out what Facebook users think.

+ I’ve written about this topic before, but it seems more pertinent than ever: This is The Only Privacy Policy That Matters. In this piece, I explain how it’s clear that Mark Zuckerberg knows whose privacy policy matters (spoiler alert: not yours). The question is, do you? Do you care that your privacy has been, and will be, repeatedly invaded — and that anything you share (willingly or otherwise) on the internet can and will be used against you? It’s been an open question for a long time. It’s going to come to a head in 2019.

+ You may not care about your privacy. But the DC attorney general does. He just slapped Facebook with a lawsuit for “allowing data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica to improperly access data from as many as 87 million users.” (So DC will subpoena Facebook execs and Facebook will probably figure a way to sell access to that subpoena to its top advertisers…)

+ Wired: The 21 (and counting) biggest Facebook scandals of 2018. (Even the Trump Family Foundation thinks that sounds like a lot of scandals.)