Facebook recently admitted that data of up to 87 million people may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
This information was shared in a blog post by the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Mike Schroepfer, which was published on Wednesday.
During a conference call shortly after the post was published, CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg said: “We didn’t take a broad enough view on what our responsibility was and that was a huge mistake. That was my mistake.”
When asked if anyone had been fired over the data scandal, the CEO replied: “I started this place, I run it, I’m responsible for what happens here. I’m going to do the best job I can going forward. I’m not looking to throw anyone under the bus for mistakes I’ve made.”
Zuckerberg also pointed out that privacy controls, which are being introduced to ensure Facebook is in compliance with Europe’s upcoming GDPR law, would be available to users globally, contrary to earlier reports. “We will make all the same controls and settings available everywhere not just Europe,” he said. “It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough. We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse and thinking through about how people could use these tools to do harm,” he added.
Zuckerberg said that harm includes “fake news, foreign interference in elections, hate speech, in addition to developers and data privacy.” He went on to say, “We didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is and that was a huge mistake.” Zuckerberg specified it was his mistake, but denied he had any plans to step down as Facebook’s CEO.
The reason behind Facebook waiting until now to say that 87 million people may have been affected after earlier saying that number was 50 million has been widely reported for weeks, “We only just finalized our understanding of this situation in the last couple of days,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday, April 11.
For its part, Cambridge Analytica says it deleted all of the information it received from the company led by Aleksandr Kogan when it learned that its retrieval violated Facebook’s terms of service.
