Pressure mounts as Facebook vows changes
THE suspended boss of Cambridge Analytica has been called to appear before British MPs to explain ‘inconsistencies’ in his evidence about the firm’s use of Facebook data.
Alexander Nix has been asked to attend another grilling by Britain’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock said the revelations about Facebook and CA marked a ‘turning point’ in people’s attitudes to their online data. He promised Britain’s Information Commissioner would also be given beefed-up powers.
The decision by MPs to recall Mr Nix comes after Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan – who developed a personality survey used to harvest tens of millions of people’s data for CA – contradicted some of Mr Nix’s evidence. It comes as Facebook’s boss Mark Zuckerberg said it was a mistake to rely on CA to delete tens of millions of Facebook users’ data, as he apologised for the ‘major breach of trust’.
He said the political consultancy had provided formal assurances that information harvested from 50million profiles had been destroyed after Facebook learned of the breach in 2015.
Mr Zuckerberg set out measures to toughen up the site’s policies, said he was now open to Facebook being regulated, and accepted that malign actors were trying to use the social network for political ends.
Facebook has seen billions of US dollars wiped off its market value following the row involving CA, which is accused of using the data to help Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign target political ads on the platform.
CA has denied using Facebook data in its work on the Trump campaign.