- Days into the Cambridge Analytica scandal rocking Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence and went on a media blitz on Wednesday.
- The #DeleteFacebook movement was growing, and the company's stock was taking a hit.
- Zuckerberg apologized, said he was willing to testify before Congress, said he thought big tech should be regulated, and explained how Facebook was trying to protect user data.
ADVERTISEMENT
Zuckerberg finally speaks on Cambridge Analytica scandal: He's willing to testify to Congress and thinks tech should be regulated
The Facebook CEO says the question with regulating tech isn't "if" but "how."
On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence on the data scandal that rocked the social network over the weekend and has sent its stock diving this week.
To follow up on an earlier statement, Zuckerberg also participated in a rare series of interviews with the press on the matter: a televised sit-down with CNN along with printed interviews in Wired, The New York Times, and Recode.
Notably, in several of these interviews he actually apologized, saying "sorry" — a word that was conspicuously absent from his Facebook post earlier in the day.
ADVERTISEMENT
The scandal centers on the British data company Cambridge Analytica, which has ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and which illicitly obtained information from as many as 50 million Facebook profiles by abusing Facebook's data-sharing features.
In his round of interviews, Zuckerberg mainly reiterated points from his statement: Facebook regrets what happened and has already taken steps designed to prevent it from happening again.
Still, the devil is in the details, and in the interviews Zuckerberg also revealed a lot about the way he and Facebook were thinking about the situation. Here are some highlights:
- happy to testify to Congress
- CNN
- told The New York Times
- #DeleteFacebook
- not good
- this is a major trust issue for people
- Zuckerberg believes that tech should be regulated
- told Wired
- Recode
- Facebook will need to analyze tens of thousands of apps at a cost of "many millions of dollars,"
All told, it's a rare look at how the CEO of the world's most successful social platform is looking at its power — and its responsibility.
JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!
ADVERTISEMENT
Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:
Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng
ADVERTISEMENT