Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, said last week the company had made multiple mistakes. The most serious one being the leak of 87 million users to Cambridge Analytica, the firm which had provided demographical intelligence to the Trump Presidential Campaign. In a testimony clarifying the issue, Zuckerberg said he was looking into the full extent of the involvement by the Russian Government during the 2016 elections.
The release of his testimony came as Facebook was preparing to notify users whose data were harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge professor, created an app called This Is Your Digital Life, in order to identify the voters through research. The data downloaded by the Cambridge professor was in return sold to Cambridge Analytica. Since the last fourteen years since Facebook was founded, lawmakers and government officials have looked at one of the largest online social media platforms with favour. According to reports, Cambridge Analytica had acquired the data of around 2,70,000 people who allowed the app to access its data along with their friends on the platform.
“For the first decade, we really focused on all the good that connecting people brings. But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough. We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse and thinking through how people could use these tools to do harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, hate speech. … We didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake. It was my mistake. But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement in relation to the Facebook Data Leaks.
Clearly, he isn’t the only one who thinks that way. On Tuesday evening, in a meeting with the Senate and the Cabinet members, an apologetic Zuckerberg said he was extremely sorry for the role the online social media platform played during the 2016 American elections. During the two day Senate session, Zuckerberg apologised by saying he was looking into all the details of the breach.
Furthermore, the Facebook team has said a bounty program with a reward of $ 40,000 has been announced for people who catch large data leaks. Payouts will start at $ 500 and will go up to as high as $ 40,000. Over the better part of the last month, the Cambridge Analytica issue has spiralled into one of the biggest scandals faced by the 33 year old Zuckerberg. The data abuse program is the first of its kind to come up in the industry, giving users an incentive to ensure their safety.
With Zuckerberg’s apology and attempt at making sure things are right, Facebook seems to be addressing the breach issue with renewed vigour and commitment.
