The latest Facebook scandal has come to a climax this week as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced Congress on Tuesday, April 10. This comes after reports surfaced that a Russian agency had been giving out information gathered from users' information. It appears that Zuckerberg is taking this matter extremely seriously which is almost uncharacteristic for the billionaire. CNBC reported that, prior to the official congressional hearing, Zuckerberg had a private meeting with Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and according to him was “forthright and honest to the degree he could be.”
Security breach
The St.
Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency has been accused of cyber meddling in the 2016 presidential election and numbers have surfaced that supposed as many as 146 million Facebook users have received information from them. Zuckerberg stated that they had found roughly 470 accounts and pages linked the Russian agency. Also, it is predicted that they had produced around 80,000 Facebook posts over the course of two years according to CNBC.
This is not the first time that Facebook has had a breach in their security as seen in the previous scandal with Cambridge Analytica. This breach possibly affected 87 million users who had their data unknowingly shared. Those who were affected were supposed to receive detailed messages Facebook starting on Monday; however, it is unknown whether or not this has actually happened yet.
Zuckerberg appears to be taking full responsibility for the actions of the Russian agency. He believes his company was too slow to stop the interference with the 2016 presidential campaign and also is apologizing for the Security Breach of his company. This privacy scandal allowed third-party applications to gather Facebook users personal data without their knowledge or consent.
Fox Business reported that the CEO wants to reassure its users that Facebook is an “idealistic and optimistic company.”
Post breach
As details of the impact of the Internet Research Agency’s meddling are surfaced throughout the trial, Zuckerberg is making a point of claiming that the company has a responsibility to stop this from happening again to its users.
In his opening testimony, he stated that he and the company are making sure to take steps in creating more security and reevaluating restrictions to outsiders’ access to individual’s personal information. These remarks were officially released by The House Energy and Commerce Committy on Monday.
In addition, supposedly the company is investigating any application that had access to people’s information before they prevented such access in 2014 which was something that had not happened prior to the Cambridge Analytica case.
As this case continues to develop, we will see what new privacy options are implemented to Facebook and how exactly Zuckerberg continues to handle this situation.
