The outrage comes as Facebook is proposing only narrow countermeasures that address the specifics of the furor over Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that’s accused of improperly obtaining data from some 50 million Facebook users for the objective of influencing voters.
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“This was a major breach of trust”.
Congress really really wants that to happen.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg said that he was sorry about the Cambridge Analytica scandal affecting “tens of millions” and that he would be “willing to testify before the US Congress”.
We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. A secondary post detailed the company’s plans for cracking down on third-party developers that make Facebook apps.
In the interview with CNN, Zuckerberg suggested the question was not whether Facebook should be regulated so much as how best to do it.
Zuckerberg previously told CNN when asked if he’d be willing to testify: ‘The short answer is I’m happy to if it’s the right thing to do’.
With Facebook already under fire for allowing fake news to proliferate during the United States election, Zuckerberg also said “we need to make sure that we up our game” ahead of midterm Congressional elections in November, in which American officials have warned Russian Federation can be expected to meddle as it did two years ago. Earlier this week, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter asking Zuckerberg about Facebook’s data sharing policies.
Zuckerberg told Recode on Wednesday that he’s up for testifying, but he didn’t seem that convinced. As you can imagine folks on Capitol Hill want to have some words with Zuckerberg and he is open to the meeting. It took many outcries and many years for Facebook to eventually start allowing its users to actually make their data more private and limit who got to see it.
The whistleblower who launched the scandal, Christopher Wylie, formerly of Cambridge Analytica, said on Twitter he had accepted invitations to testify before USA and United Kingdom lawmakers.
With the recent Cambridge Analytics scandal involving Facebook on breach of data protection, it’s pertinent to be mindful of what information apps and organisations have access to going forward.
British press have credited Cambridge Analytica with providing services to pro-Brexit campaign Leave.EU, though CEO Alexander Nix has denied this.
“Cambridge Analytica at that time was using entirely commercial data”.
In 2014, Dr. AleKsandr Kogan was hired by the Cambridge Analytica with $800,000 to develop an application which plays with the psychology of the people.
Cambridge Analytica denies any wrongdoing, and said Friday it was undertaking an independent third-party audit to verify that it no longer holds any of the mined data.
“This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes”, it added in a statement.
But you may be surprised how many apps like Airbnb or Venmo you’ve logged into through the social network over the years.
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“Investors now have to consider whether or not the company will conclude that it has grown in a manner that has proven to be untenable”, said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. The company now has a $479 billion market value.
