The promises: Facebook’s history with privacy

“We’ve made a bunch of mistakes.” “Everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times.” “Not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.”

Sound familiar? It’s Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing a major privacy breach — seven years ago .

Lawmakers in many countries may be focused on Cambridge Analytica’s alleged improper use of Facebook data, but the social network’s privacy problems back more than a decade. Here are some of the company’s most notable missteps and promises around privacy.

2007

The social media darling unveils its Facebook Platform to great fanfare. Zuckerberg says app developers can now access the web of connections between users and their friends, a set of connections Facebook calls the “social graph.”

“The social graph is changing the way the world works,” he says .

That November, Facebook launches Beacon, which shares what users are doing on other websites with their Facebook friends. Many users find it intrusive and difficult to disable. Massachusetts resident Sean Lane buys his wife a diamond ring for Christmas on Overstock.com, but Facebook ruins the surprise, an incident leading to a class-action lawsuit.

In December, Zuckerberg apologizes and enables users to shut off Beacon. “I know we can do better,” he says .

2008

Facebook launches Facebook Connect, aiming to correct Beacon’s mistakes by requiring users to take deliberate action before