Mark Zuckerberg has admitted Facebook ‘made mistakes’ over protecting user’s personal information.
The chief executive broke his silence over the social media giant’s links to controversial British data firm Cambridge Analytica (CA).
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He made his statement on what else, his Facebook page, as he faced pressure to explain its privacy safeguards from regulators and politicians in the US and UK.
CA was suspended from Facebook last week after it emerged that data on 50 million users had not been destroyed as agreed.
‘I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform,’ he said.
‘I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community.
‘While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past.
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‘We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.’
Earlier on Wednesday, an academic who developed the app used by CA to harvest data said that he had no idea his work would be used in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Alexandr Kogan told the BBC that both Facebook and CA have tried to place the blame on him for violating the social media platform’s terms of service, even though Cambridge Analytica ensured him that everything he did was legal.
‘My view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica,’ he said.
‘Honestly, we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately, we thought we were doing something that was really normal.’
Authorities in Britain and the United States are investigating the alleged improper use of Facebook data by CA.
Facebook shares have dropped some 9% since the revelations were first published, raising questions about whether social media sites are violating users’ privacy.
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The head of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, was suspended on Tuesday after Channel 4 News broadcast hidden camera footage of him suggesting the company could use young women to catch opposition politicians in compromising positions.
Footage also showed Mr Nix bragging about the firm’s pivotal role in the Trump campaign.
Mr Nix said Cambridge Analytica handled ‘all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting’ for the Trump campaign, and used emails with a ‘self-destruct timer’ to make the firm’s role more difficult to trace.
‘There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing,’ he said.
More: UK
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