Facebook CEO admits mistakes were made, offers next steps

Mark Zuckerberg posts a timeline of the events involving the breach of users’ information and its exploitation by Cambridge Analytica. He says, ‘We have a responsibility to protect your data.’

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Facebook’s founder and CEO has broken his silence over the scandal roiling his company.

As he usually does, he shared his thoughts via his Facebook account.

He wrote:

I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation — including the steps we’ve already taken and our next steps to address this important issue.

We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.

He attempted to reframe the story, offering a timeline:

In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. […]

In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends’ data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends’ data.

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