Mark Zuckerberg Responds to Widening Data Scandal: "It Was My Mistake"
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday his company hadn’t taken a “broad enough view of what our responsibility was” to its more than 2 billion users.
In a conference call with reporters, Zuckerberg called Facebook’s handling of user data a “huge mistake,” one that ultimately led to the political firm Cambridge Analytica harvesting personal information about millions of users. "It was my mistake," he said.
His comments came after Facebook said Wednesday that 87 million users had their data exploited by Cambridge Analytica, a vast increase over an earlier estimate of 50 million users.
In the rare and wide-ranging Q&A session with reporters, Zuckerberg made the following points:
- He said that he had been “too flippant” in November 2016 when he called reports that fake news swayed the U.S. presidential election was a “crazy idea.”
- Multiple reporters asked Zuckerberg if he was still the right person to lead Facebook after the company’s latest scandals, which have knocked off billions of dollars from its market value. Zuckerberg, who controls the majority of Facebook’s voting stock, said he had no intention of stepping down from his positions as CEO or board chairman. “When you’re building something like Facebook that’s unprecedented in the world, you’re going to mess up,” he said.
- Despite recent concerns from Wall Street over Facebook’s ability to grow revenue, Zuckerberg said that recent headlines, including the “#DeleteFacebook” movement, had so far “no meaningful impact” on the company’s advertising business.
- Facebook is overhauling its privacy settings in Europe to comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation law. “We intend to make all the same controls available everywhere, not just in Europe,” Zuckerberg said.
Hours before Zuckerberg’s comments to the press, Facebook announced several [sweeping changes to its privacy policies] (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/) that include limiting the amount of user data that’s accessible to third-party developers.
Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify on April 11 before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee about Facebook’s responsibility for protecting user data.
*Reporting by Alex Heath.*
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