Facebook founder breaks this silence amid Cambridge Analytica crisis

FACEBOOK founder Mark Zuckerberg has finally commented on the growing crisis that has wiped tens of billions from the company’s share price.

Politicians in the US and UK have called for answers about what the social media giant knew about how personal data was being shared.

The 33-year-old, who was once speculated about as a presidential candidate in the making, had gone to ground despite calls for him to face inquiries in person on both sides of the Atlantic.

It comes after a whistleblower claimed Cambridge Analytica used data harvested from up to 50 million profiles to determine voter preferences.

But in a Facebook post this morning, Mr Zuckerberg has addressed the issue and the measures Facebook has taken.

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

“I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”
 

On Wednesday, former Facebook platform operations manager Sandy Parakilas told UK MPs the company was blase about third party developers accessing user information prior to 2014 when it changed the Friends Permission features.

When asked if Mr Zuckerberg was aware of a presentation he gave outlining his concerns to privacy executives, he said: “I think it was well understood both internally and externally there was risk with respect to the way Facebook platform was handling data.

“I don’t think it was a secret that this was a problem.”

Mr Parakilas said the company attitude to data gathering could be described as the “wild west” and the unofficial motto was “move fast and break things” in the quest for new users.

“Most of the goals of the company were around growth in the number of people who use the service,” he said. “Some of the most popular apps had hundreds of millions of users. I believe that some of those apps were asking Friends Permission so there was a huge amount of data being pulled from Facebook as a result. It was concerning to me.”

It comes as the #DeleteFacebook movement is backed by Brian Acton, the co-founder of messaging service WhatsApp that Facebook bought in 2014.

“It is time. #deletefacebook,” he tweeted. “Delete and forget. Now’s the time to care about privacy.”

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