By Pascal Oparada
On Wednesday, March 21, 2018, Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg released a statement, stating Facebook’s and his own side of the story involving the social media network and Cambridge Analytica.
In the statement, Zuckerberg stated how Facebook got embroiled in a data row with Cambridge Analytica, a company fingered with meddling with US and other elections around the world, using data harvested from Facebook.
“In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksander Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends’ data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends’ data,” Zuckerberg said.
According to him, in order to prevent abusive apps, Facebook announced that they were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps have access to. He said that apps like Kogan’s could no longer ask for data about a person’s friends unless their friends had also authorized the app.
“We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people,” Zuckerberg stated.
In 2015, according to him, a journalist from The Guardian told Facebook that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. The Facebook Founder called Kogan’s actions a breach of trust and proceeded to ban Kogan’s app from the platform.
But before the ban, the damage had been done. Kogan had shared the data of over 50 million Facebook users with Cambridge Analytica.
Zuckerberg said his platform demanded from Cambridge Analytica certify that they have deleted all improperly acquired data. Cambridge Analytica obliged. Or so it seemed.
“Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this.
“This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that,” He said.
“I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward,”. Zuckerberg said.
The data row has caused a significant drop in the shares of Facebook. According to Wall Street Journal, the shares of the techgiant fell by 6 per cent Wednesday.
