Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that his personal data was handed over to election consultants Cambridge Analytica, the British firm accused of helping politicians use Facebook data to manipulate users’ voting intentions around the world.
Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, reading questions from her constituents at a hearing of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, asked Mr Zuckerberg whether his data was “included in the data sold to the malicious third parties”.
With a slight hesitation, Mr Zuckerberg replied: “Yes.”
The 33-year-old founder and CEO of Facebook, the social media giant at the centre of a number of overlapping scandals relating to how private information from its users is shared, is in Washington to face a second day of questioning from politicians.
On Tuesday Facebook began notifying more than 87 million people around the world, including one million Britons, that their private information may have been given to Cambridge Analytica by an app developer from Cambridge University.
Representatives grilled Mr Zuckerberg on a wide range of issues around privacy, surveillance, censorship and politics, regularly asking for yes or no answers which the Facebook founder struggled to provide.
Representative Eshoo called Facebook’s terms and conditions around privacy a “minefield” and repeatedly asked Mr Zuckerberg whether he was “aware of other data mishandlings which have not been disclosed”.
In response, he initially said no, but reiterated Facebook’s new investigation into third-party apps on the platform was seeking to discover if there had been any other cases of misuse.
On the topic of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, Mr Zuckerberg admitted it would be difficult to completely eradicate such behaviour for “as long as Russia employs people for the activity”.
“It’s an arms race and I think we’re making ground,” he said.
Politicians in the US and UK are weighing up the possibility of legislation to regulate large technology companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter which are accused of failing to regulate themselves.
In his opening statement committee chair Greg Walden quoted the company’s early motto to “move fast and break things”, asking whether the company had “moved too fast and broken too many things”.
Mr Zuckerberg said that he believes regulation of his industry is “inevitable”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel