Zuckerberg takes blame for Facebook data share
2 more firms suspended as part of investigation
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated his regrets for the social network’s lapses of data privacy and security, setting the stage for an apologyladen appearance before Congress.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here,” Zuckerberg’s testimony, released ahead of a Wednesday appearance before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said.
Zuckerberg spoke with lawmakers Monday, a day before he is scheduled to testify before the combined Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees Tuesday and the House Commerce committee Wednesday.
The Facebook co-founder comes to Washington amid a drumbeat of concern about how Facebook treats its users’ very personal information.
The social network found itself manipulated during the 2016 election season, with Russian influence attempting to foment discord among voters. Then Facebook was forced to admit that tens of millions of Facebook users’ information may have been misused by a consulting firm that assisted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The outrage that followed has sent Zuckerberg and his senior staff into crisis mode, including the CEO’s conceding to his first-ever testimony to Congress.
Zuckerberg has recently announced several initiatives to better secure user information and prevent misuse of the network. The latest: an election research committee, including independent researchers who will assist Facebook in rooting out weaknesses.
“Facebook will seek researchers’ help
“I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.” Mark Zuckerberg
in preventing future election manipulation on the social media platform and, in its campaign to improve privacy, has suspended two more data firms as part of an ongoing investigation into the potential misuse of user data by political targeting firm Cambridge Analytica.”
The formation of an independent election research commission is part of Facebook’s strategy to help prevent a repeat of the 2016 presidential election campaign in which more than 3,000 ads were bought by 470 fake accounts and pages run by the Internet Research
Agency, a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia. Many of the ads sought to spread divisive messages to stir up voters and public outrage.
“The goal is both to get the ideas of leading academics on how to address these issues as well as to hold us accountable for making sure we protect the integrity of these elections on Facebook,” Zuckerberg said in a note posted on his Facebook page Monday. “Looking back, it’s clear we were too slow identifying election interference in 2016, and we need to do better in future elections.”
This new election research initiative — one of several changes announced in the last two weeks — comes as Zuckerberg defends the firm he co-founded from calls it should face stricter regulations on how it handles its users’ data.
Facebook is improving its privacy settings to make them easier for users to understand and is toughening advertising verification methods to prevent societal tampering in political issues, the company said last week.
The social networking giant continued to take steps to recover from the scandal that it now thinks could involve the data misuse of as many as 87 million people, mostly in the United States, when their data was improperly shared by Cambridge Analytica. The social network said it will begin notifying users Monday if their data was shared as part of the incident.
Concerns about possible ties to the British political consulting firm led Facebook to suspend two more firms — San Francisco-based research firm CubeYou and Canadian digital marketer AggregateIQ — as part of its investigation. Facebook suspended CubeYou on Sunday after CNBC notified Facebook the researcher had quizzes on the platform that collected user data and shared it with marketers. CubeYou had been working with the Psychometrics Lab at Cambridge University, also the workplace of psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan, who Facebook said passed data to Cambridge Analytica.
The data was generated by a personality app Kogan created, downloaded 270,000 times but connected to more Facebook users who were friends of those who used the app. Facebook last month said it suspended Cambridge Analytica because it improperly obtained that data from Kogan.
As part of its investigation, CubeYou faces an audit by Facebook. “In addition, we will work with the U.K. (Information Commissioner’s office) to ask the University of Cambridge about the development of apps in general by its Psychometrics Centre given this case and the misuse by Kogan,” Ime Archibong, Facebook’s vice president of product, saisd in a statement.
CubeYou’s “You Are What You Like” quizzes had disclaimers similar to the Kogan-created “This Is Your Digital Life” app, about the data being used for academic purposes. Under Facebook’s settings at the time, the app could gain access to friends of those who answered the quiz. CubeYou CEO Federico Treu told CNBC the app did not gain access to friends’ information, but only to friends who opted into the app on their own.
Facebook suspended the other company, AggregateIQ, based in Victoria, British Columbia, after whistle-blower Christopher Wylie said Aggregate IQ had worked with Cambridge Analytica parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories.
“In light of recent reports that AggregateIQ may be affiliated with SCL and may, as a result, have improperly received FB user data, we have added them to the list of entities we have suspended from our platform while we investigate,” Facebook said in a statement. “Our internal review continues, and we will cooperate fully with any in- vestigations by regulatory authorities.”
Aggregate IQ, on its website, says it “has never managed, nor did we ever have access to, any Facebook data or database allegedly obtained improperly by Cambridge Analytica.”
Also in advance of Zuckerberg’s testimony, U.S. and European consumer groups asked Facebook to establish privacy standards as stringent as those due to be implemented by the European Union next month.
“The targeting of internet users, based on detailed and secret profiling with opaque algorithms, threatens not only consumer privacy but also democratic institutions,” a letter addressed Monday to Zuckerberg from the members of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue says.
The EU will adopt new data rules called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on May 25. Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in January that Facebook’s planned improvements to user privacy settings would give the company “a very good foundation to meet all the requirements” of the GDPR.
The U.S. and EU consumer groups urged Zuckerberg to commit to “global compliance with the GDPR” when testifying before Congress this week. “These are protections that all users should be entitled to no matter where they are located,” read the letter, signed by Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, and Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad of the Norwegian Consumer Council.