Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is preparing to face a bipartisan inquisition into the social media platform’s handling of user data, and its role in facilitating (unwittingly, it seems) Russia’s interference with our election. He plans to take the humble, apologetic route in a hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In his prepared remarks, Zuckerberg says that “it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake.” He states flat out: ” It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”
There will be a host of questions regarding Facebook’s obliviousness. Zuckerberg says that in 2015 Facebook learned that data information provided to an app researcher had been shared with Cambridge Analytica, a firm that ran data operations for President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Facebook banned the app and demanded that the app developer confirm the data had been destroyed. However, Congress will want to know why Facebook did not inform users at that time of the breach, or demand evidence that Cambridge Analytica had destroyed the data. Why did it have to learn last month “from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified”? Why only then did it ban Cambridge Analytica? Former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi told me that Facebook’s problem stemmed from “virtually no governance over the lucrative sale of data, coupled with a naivete about risk.”
Full Article: Zuckerberg’s testimony will reveal Trump’s dissembling on Russia – The Washington Post.