The moment Zuckerberg appeared before US lawmakers made Facebook shares surge 4.5%
Facebook has suffered great losses over the past month, amid reports that user data was misused. The cause behind it is a personality app created by Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan, whose application was used by 300,000 people. Moreover, Kogan also says that he was able to access the information of millions of accounts.
Zuckerberg said that the data was later used by Cambridge Analytica, against Facebook’s rules. The abuse was first revealed by reporters at The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 last month. At the same time, Cambridge Analytica was affiliated with Donald Trump’s campaign.
This Tuesday, Zuckerberg participated in a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees and declared that Facebook is willing to correct issues with its platform, even though it has failed to notify the FTC about the data problems.
In addition, Zuckerberg said that he takes responsibility for the content that can be found on Facebook, but that the fact that data regularly changes hands with advertisers is simply a misunderstanding.
“There’s a very common misconception about Facebook that we sell data to advertisers,” Zuckerberg said.
Furthermore, he told Congress that he is ready to welcome the right regulations, and that the company is cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation regarding the interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Even though Zuckerberg received tough questions, he stood by his view that the company will maintain, at least in part, a free, ad-supported business model, the one that has catapulted Facebook to one of the most valuable public companies.
“To be clear, we don’t offer an option today for people to pay to not show ads,” Zuckerberg said. “We think offering people an ad-supported service is the most aligned with our mission of trying to connect everyone in the world, because we want to offer a free service that everyone can afford. That’s the only way we can reach billions of people.”
Source: cnbc.com
