Mark Zuckerberg has finally broken his long, painful silence, and confirmed that he is indeed aware of the almighty mess Facebook is currently in.
In a lengthy update posted to his Facebook page last night, the Facebook CEO promised to tell everyone who might have been affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal that their data may have been misused.
Reassuringly, he also told CNN that Facebook still needs to find out if there are “any other Cambridge Analyticas out there, or folks who have improperly accessed data”. If the company finds out that this wasn’t an isolated incident, it says it will come clean right away.
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“We will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity,” Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook update.
“We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.”
He says Facebook will also add a tool to the top of the News Feed, which will make it easier for users to restrict the amount of data apps can access.
He added: “We will restrict developers’ data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in 3 months.
“We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in — to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We’ll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data.
“And we’ll have more changes to share in the next few days.”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
