Facebook took out full-page ads in 7 British newspapers and 3 American ones to apologize for the ongoing Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal overwhelming the platform in a legal and regulatory nightmare on Sunday.
The ads took a form of an apology and were penned by CEO of the company. They aimed to clarify that they had stopped third-party apps from getting “so much information,” and that they’ve begun “limiting the data apps get when you sign up.” This announcement was made last week.
Zuckerberg writes, “This was a breach of trust and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. I promise to do better for you.” This new, more definitive apology came in a few days after the CEO’s burst of interviews with American media organizations which included CNN, Wired, The New York Times, and Recode.
What’s surprising is that the initial post addressing the situation made by the CEO of the company last week did not say that he or the company was sorry. It was when he appeared on a TV broadcast interview with CNN that he made an actual verbal apology and that came after days of total silence from the top leadership of Facebook on the subject since the Cambridge Analytica revelations had come to light more than a week before now.
The way we see it, the data mining and analytics company based in London, has gained access to data on a total of about 50 million Facebook profiles as a result of the data sharing policies which Facebook ad developers basked as at 2014. This data which was sold to Cambridge Analytica against the terms of service of Facebook according to reports we got from our sources played a major role in influencing the election of the firm ad targeting toolset used by the campaign of President Donald Trump and others. The fallout since then has included many lawsuits, governmental inquiries, a #DeleteFacebook user boycott campaign, and a quick decline in share price that’s wiped out nearly $50 billion of the company’s market cap.
