Zuckerberg: Cambridge scandal undermines foundation of Facebook and Instagram

The Cambridge Analytica scandal is undermining the foundation of Facebook and Instagram, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview. The confidence to put posts and photos online is that foundation, Zuckerberg argues.

Zuckerberg said in an interview with Recode that the Cambridge scandal has resulted in users not relying on his company to ensure that data they share only gets to people they want to see. “The first thing people care about is privacy and how we treat their data,” Zuckerberg said. “You know, if you think about it, the question is, ‘Can I send content there?’ the most fundamental of our services, be it Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram.”

That’s why Zuckerberg calls the scandal a “pretty big deal.” “Is my photo, video or text going to the people I want it to go to and only to those people? If there is a break in that, it undermines the fundamental purpose of those services. That’s why we try to get certainty about what is happening And we’re trying to make sure it never happens again.”

Facebook has already announced measures in response to this case. This gives apps and games access to less data. Facebook is also going to look closely at the practices of developers who had access to a lot of data from Facebook users until 2014. In the near future, users will also see a link to an existing tool at the top of the news overview to view which apps have access to their data.

Cambridge Analytica gained access to the private data of 50 million Facebook users. This was done by buying the data from the developer of a Facebook app that had been consulted by several hundred thousand users. Because those users had given access to the private data of all their contacts, the database was filled with fifty million profiles.