Zuckerberg apologises for major data debacle

Knew about it in 2015; Scandal crucial as ’18 is an election year

Emerging after several days in hiding while the Cambridge Analytica storm swamped his company, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally spoke on Thursday. In his statement he said, “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.” However Facebook knew about the breach in 2015, and took action, but it wasn’t until the story broke that Zuckerberg said anything. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is crucial as 2018 is an election year for the US, Brazil, India and a number of other countries.

Facebook over the past 14 years has evolved from Harvard idea to a publicly traded company. In its course, it accumulated a data base of more than 2 billion active users. Most of who freely shared their lives without thinking about how valuable that information might be—or, in the wrong hands, how dangerous. On being asked if in future should this type of industry be regulated Zuckerberg said, “I actually am not sure we shouldn’t be regulated. I think that in general, technology is an increasingly important trend in the world. I think the question is more what is the right regulation, rather than “Yes or no, should we be regulated?”

The Federal Election Commission is considering new rules for political ads on the Internet, and probes have been opened into the Cambridge Analytica matter. Several legislators have called for Zuckerberg to testify before Congress. While in the past, Zuckerberg has sent his lawyers to Capitol Hill, this time, he says, “he’s “happy to” do it himself.