Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg admits that they "made mistakes"

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook has admitted that the social network “made mistakes” that led millions of Facebook users having their data exploited by a political consultancy. On the recent days, Cambridge Analytic was accused of improperly using the data on behalf of political clients. Zuckerberg in his first statement on the scandal stated that in a Facebook post that a “breach of trust” had occurred. He also pledged to make it far harder for apps to “harvest” user information. Further, talking about the Mark Zuckerberg stated that they have a responsibility to protect the people's data and that if they cannot then they do not deserve to serve the people.

"I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform." - CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg's pledges...

To address current and past problems, he said his company would:

• Investigate all Facebook apps that had access to large amounts of information before the platform was changed "to dramatically reduce data access" in 2014
• Conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity
• Ban any developer that did not agree to a thorough audit
• Ban developers that had misused personally identifiable information, and "tell everyone affected by those apps"

Further, he stated that in future Facebook would:

• Restrict developers' data access "even further" to prevent other kinds of abuse
• Remove developers' access to a user's data if the user hadn't activated the developer's app for three months
• Reduce the data that users give an app when they sign in to just name, profile photo, and email address
• Require developers to obtain approval and also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data

“While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past.” - Mark Zuckerberg

Further, he added that "We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward."