Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a statement this afternoon on the burgeoning data scandal with Cambridge Analytica, the firm that harvested information from 50 million profiles in the runup to the 2016 election.
Cambridge Analytica was given data from a quiz developed by a professor which collected data of people who used it, as well as the data of those people’s friends. The information reportedly was kept by Cambridge Analytica after Facebook asked it be deleted. Cambridge Analytica was later hired by President Donald Trump for his campaign.
Zuckerberg addressed the timeline of the scandal but placed the onus on Cambridge Analytica, and said the company misled them about deleting the data.
In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people’s consent, so we immediately banned Kogan’s app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications.
Zuckerberg said that what happened on Facebook was ultimately his responsibility, and presented a three-step plan to prevent a situation like this from happening again: Investigate third-party apps, restrict developers’ access to user data on the whole, and give users tools to see what data of theirs is being shared.
Facebook has been quiet in the days after the scandal broke. It has faced mounting criticism that it’s been willfully deceptive and slow to address problems after the 2016 election. In the comments of the post, Zuckerberg said that he would be conducting an interview with CNN soon.
You can read his full post below.
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071
