Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted the company "made mistakes" in how it handled the Cambridge Analytica scandal and outlined plans to improve transparency and tighten controls on how personal data is used on Facebook.
In a statement posted on the social network, Zuckerberg said he's been "working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again". According to the CEO, "the most important actions to prevent this from happening again" were already taken by Facebook several years ago, in 2014, when the group first restricted third-party apps' access to Facebook user data. "But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it," Zuckerberg said.
In addition to the audit launched to ensure Cambridge Analytica no longer holds any Facebook data, the company said it will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before it changed its policies in 2014. Any app with suspicious activity will be subjected to a full audit, and developers that misused 'personally identifiable information' will be banned from Facebook.
Facebook also pledged more transparency to users. While it learned about the Cambridge Analytica problems in 2015 from the press, users affected were not informed then. This will now change, with anyone whose data may have been accessed via the 'thisisyourdigitallife' app informed. In future, if any other app is removed for misusing data, everyone who used it will be told.
A certain 'right to be forgotten' will also be implemented. If a Facebook user doesn't use an app for three months, the social network will turn off the app’s access to their information.
Apps will also have restricted access to user data using the standard Facebook Login - only name, profile photo and email address. Requesting any other data will require explicit approval from Facebook, including a contract, and the user's consent.
In addition, Facebook users will be encouraged to take more control over apps and the information they access. Facebook already offers such options in the privacy settings, and going forward, it will make these choices more prominent and easier to manage. Zuckerberg said the tool will appear at the top of each user's News Feed in the next month to highlight which apps are used and how to revoke those apps' permissions to access data.
Facebook said it will be announcing more in the coming weeks about its efforts to "put people more in control of their data". Some of the changes had already been in the works before the CA scandal broke, as part of the company's implementation of the new General Data Protection Regulation coming into effect in the EU in May.
The CEO and founder's personal intervention helped stop the slide in Facebook's share price, which finished up slightly on 21 March. He also gave interviews to the New York Times, Wired and CNN. Zuckerberg said it was taking "longer to fix all these issues than we'd like, but I promise you we'll work through this and build a better service over the long term".
