Facebook says it will rein in leaks
• Zuckerberg apologises for ‘major breach of trust’
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to fix problems at the social media company as it fights a scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to fix problems at the social media company as it fights a scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users.
“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg said on the harvesting of Facebook user data by a British firm linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
He announced new steps to rein in the leakage of data to outside developers and third-party apps, while giving users more control over their information.
“This was a major breach of trust and I’m really sorry that this happened,” he told CNN. “Our responsibility is to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Zuckerberg said he would testify before the US congress if he was the person at Facebook best placed to answer questions and that he was not opposed to regulating internet titans such as the social network.
“I am actually not sure we shouldn’t be regulated,” he said.
The scandal erupted after a whistle-blower disclosed that British data consultancy Cambridge Analytica had created psychological profiles on 50million Facebook users via a personality prediction app, created by a researcher named Aleksandr Kogan. The app was downloaded by 270,000 people, but also scooped up their friends’ data without consent, as was possible under Facebook’s rules at the time.
Facebook said it discovered last week that Cambridge might not have deleted the data as it certified. “This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post.
“But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.”
Zuckerberg told the New York Times that even if the platform cut developer access to Facebook data, as it planned to do, “there’s still this issue of: are there other Cambridge Analyticas out there, or other Kogans”.
Since the 2016 US election, Facebook had taken steps that made it harder for foreign governments to interfere in elections, he said. But, he added, “we need to make sure we up our game” ahead of the US midterm elections in November “because Russia and other states are going to get more sophisticated when it comes to meddling”.
Zuckerberg’s apology followed another day of damaging accusations against the world’s biggest social network as calls mounted for investigations on both sides of the Atlantic.
Max Schrems, a Viennabased activist who has brought online data protection cases before European courts, said he complained to the Irish Data Protection Authority in 2011 about the controversial dataharvesting methods.
Britain’s culture and digital minister, Matt Hancock, said it should not be left to companies such as Facebook to set their own rules on data privacy.
“Zuckerberg has apologised and said that they are going to make some changes, but frankly I don’t think those changes go far enough,” Hancock said.
ABC News reported that US special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, was looking at Cambridge Analytica’s role in the Trump effort. The firm has maintained it did not use Facebook data in the Trump campaign, but its nowsuspended CEO boasted that his company was deeply involved in the race.