Zuckerberg says will ensure no one interferes in Indian elections
WASHINGTON: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised for the social network’s misuse of member data during congressional hearings and said he will ensure his company is not used to interfere in upcoming elections in India, Pakistan, Brazil and the US.
Testifying at a joint hearing of the Senate’s judiciary and commerce committees that lasted around five hours on Tuesday, Zuckerberg sounded contrite about mistakes, owning up to them personally, as he sought to assure lawmakers, some of whom appeared skeptical, that they wouldn’t be repeated.
He addressed questions on a range of issues, from Facebook’s use of personal data from subscribers in the light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and manipulation of the network by Russians to interfere in the 2016 US elections, to the sheer size of the company and the need for regulation.
“The most important thing that I care about right now is making sure that no one interferes in the various 2018 elections around the world,” Zuckerberg, 33, said in reply to a question about the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
“We have an extremely important US mid-term (elections), we have major elections in India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Hungary coming up,” he said referring to congressional elections in the US in November and the 2019 general election in India.
He repeated the assurances in prepared remarks ahead of an appearance before the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce on Wednesday: “In order to require verification for all of these pages and advertisers, we will hire thousands of more people. We’re committed to getting this done in time for the critical months before the 2018 elections in the US as well as elections in Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and elsewhere in the next year.”
He added Facebook will put in place several measures, from “building and deploying new AI tools that take down fake news to growing our security team to more than 20,000 people to…verify every advertiser who is doing political and (issuing) ads to make sure that the kind of interference Russians were able to do in 2016 is much harder to pull off in the future”.
Most of Facebook’s two billion users, he reminded a senator, were outside the US. There are 217 million users in India.
ZUCKERBERG’S OWN DATA SWEPT UP
Zuckerberg told lawmakers on Wednesday his own personal data was swept up among that of 87 million users improperly harvested by Cambridge Analytica.
“Was your own data included in the data sold to the malicious third parties? Your own personal data,” asked Congresswoman Ann Eshoo.
“Yes,” said Zuckerberg, looking straight ahead.