(FE)
Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that his company made mistakes in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users and promised tougher steps to restrict developers’ access to such information. The world’s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States about a whistleblower’s allegations that London-based political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed user information to build profiles on American voters which were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.
Zuckerberg, in his first public comments since the scandal erupted at the weekend, said in a post on Facebook that the company “made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”
He did not elaborate on what the mistakes were, but he said the social network plans to conduct an investigation of apps on its platform, restrict developer access to data, and give members a tool that lets them more easily disable access to their Facebook data. Zuckerberg later told CNN, “This was a major breach of trust. I’m really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data.” His plans did not represent a big reduction of advertisers’ ability to use Facebook data, which is the company’s lifeblood.
