Mark Zuckerberg Addresses Facebook’s Privacy Problem

The founder of Facebook spoke to Wired about the reports that have been swirling about the platform.

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Young people are deleting the Facebook app from their phones. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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Mark Zuckerberg has remained silent through the news that data science firm Cambridge Analytica obtained the data of 50 million Facebook users. But on WednesdayZuckerberg addressed the problems in a personal Facebook post and also spoke to Wired about some of the solutions he will introduce.

Zuckerberg told Wired that in 2015, Facebook heard from journalists at The Guardian that Aleksandr Kogan seemed to have shared data with Cambridge Analytica and a few other parties. Zuckerberg says that they demanded a legal certification from Kogan and everyone he shared the data with. At the time, Cambridge Analytica told Facebook they hadn’t received raw Facebook data at all. Zuckerberg thinks the biggest mistake they made was not digging deeper into whether or not they had actually misused Facebook data. In order to fix this, Zuckerberg told Wired that they are going to go and do a “full investigation of every single app that was operating before we had the more restrictive platform policies.” If they find an app with suspicious activity, they will do a full forensic audit. He says he knows they have a “serious responsibility” and he wants to make sure that they “take it as seriously as it should be taken.”

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