Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addresses Cambridge Analytica scandal
Here's how Zuckerberg says Facebook handled the situation with Cambridge Analytica and what the company plans to do next.
It's been a few days since The New York Times released a report about Cambridge Analytica, a company that scooped up the data of more than 50 million Facebook users without their consent and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg now has something to say about what's become a huge privacy scandal for the social network.
In a post on Facebook (of course), Zuckerberg outlined what the company says happened between 2007 and 2018.
In short:
- 2007: Facebook launches a tool called Facebook Platform that let users log in to apps using Facebook — it also gave those apps access to certain user data and the data of their friends.
- 2013: Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan creates a personality quiz. It gets installed by a bunch of people (~300,000).
- Thanks to Facebook Platform, the personality quiz is able to gain access to the data of more than 50 million Facebook users.
- 2014: Facebook limits the amount of data an app can gather.
- Apps can't collect data on a user's friends unless their friends also uses the app.
- Developers are required to get approval from Facebook before they can request sensitive user data.
- 2015: Facebook learns that the researcher shared the data from his personality quiz with Cambridge Analytica.
- Facebook bans Kogan's app and demands that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica prove they deleted the user data. Zuckerberg says they proved it.
- 2018: Facebook learns that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data after all.
- Facebook bans Cambridge Analytica from using its services.
- Cambridge Analytica says they've deleted the data and agree to prove it.
- Facebook hires a firm to perform a forensic audit, thereby confirming the data has been deleted.
Zuckerberg says the step Facebook took in 2014 to limit data collection was the most important, effective tool for combatting this level of data harvesting by third-party apps. He also outlined the next three steps the company plans to take:
First, 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. 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.
Second, 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.
Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you've allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.
You can read the post in its entirety over on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page … if you haven't already deleted your Facebook, anyway.
Thoughts?
Do you think Facebook's Three Big Steps are going to be enough to combat data harvesting? Are you still planning on deleting your Facebook? Going to keep it around for now? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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