Facebook Boss, Mark Zuckerberg Apologises For Data Misuse

The week has been an intense one for Facebook over data misuse. There have been two other players in the scene-Dr. Aleksandra Kogan, the psychology academic who created the app and Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting company who ran the 2016 elections for Donald Trump. Regardless of each party sharing in the responsibility of users’ data, the brouhaha comes down to Facebook whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that his social media platform erred and that mistake led to exploitation of data owned by 50 million users by the political consulting firm.

The London-based political consulting firm is grossly accused of exploiting users’ data in favour of a candidate in the 2016 US election. However, since the data was harvested from Facebook via an app, Mr. Zuckerberg in an interview with CNN apologised for the “breach of trust.”

In his Facebook post, he promised to correct the mistake by creating more stringent rules to make it difficult for apps to obtain users’ data. “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” he said.

However, BBC’s Dave Lee thinks otherwise; he believes that Mr. Zuckerberg is as happened not prepared to take the blame for what has happened. “Contrition has never been Mr. Zuckerberg’s strong point, and the statement, days in the making was no different”, he said.

He argues further that the Facebook boss did not apologise to the users affected, the investors who are now at risk of running into a loss and the staff members who have been trapped in a mess. He also didn’t give a detailed explanation of why he didn’t ban the company in 2014 after he learnt of the data exploitation saga and to formally inform users that their data had been toyed with. They only got to know or read via social media networks.

Meanwhile, Facebook had earlier pledged that it would investigate all Facebook apps that have access to obtain users’ information before it decided to “reduce the data access” in 2014.  He said further that his network would conduct a full forensic audit of every app and ban any developer that did not agree with the terms as well as issuing the developer a permanent ban before telling the users’ affected by the exploitation.

However, Facebook is yet to meet his end of the bargain since he’s again to tell the users about the exploitation officially.