Mark Zuckerberg has broken his five-day silence on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, issuing a public apology and announcing changes to Facebook's data-sharing policies. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the CEO acknowledged a 'breach of trust' after it was revealed that the personal data of approximately 50 million Americans was harvested and improperly shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
'We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you,' Zuckerberg wrote. He admitted that the company 'made mistakes' and outlined steps to prevent future misuse, including investigating apps that had access to large amounts of data before 2014 and auditing those showing suspicious activity. Facebook will also inform users whose data was misused.
In interviews with CNN, the New York Times, and other outlets, Zuckerberg apologised for the 'breach of trust' and expressed qualified openness to testifying before Congress. He acknowledged that relying on certifications from Aleksandr Kogan and Cambridge Analytica that they had destroyed the data was 'a mistake'.
The scandal stems from Facebook policies from 2007 to 2014 that allowed third-party app developers to extract personal data about users and their friends. Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan used an app to collect data from over 50 million people, which he then transferred to Cambridge Analytica for political and commercial use.
Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, shared Zuckerberg's post and added: 'We know that this was a major violation of people's trust, and I deeply regret that we didn't do enough to deal with it.' However, critics like US design professor David Carroll, who is challenging Cambridge Analytica through UK courts, called the reforms 'inadequate', stating that users should be notified directly.
