Advertisers threaten to quit Facebook over Cambridge Analytica scandal - Zuckerberg says sorry for ‘major breach of trust’
Advertisers threaten to quit Facebook over Cambridge
Analytica scandal
Zuckerberg says sorry for ‘major breach of trust’
By Mark Bridge, James Dean | Billy Kenber March 22 2018,
9:00am
Advertisers threatened to abandon Facebook last night as
Mark Zuckerberg apologised for mistakes it made over the Cambridge Analytica
scandal.
Mr Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive of the US technology
giant, broke his silence to head off a revolt among users and financial
backers. He described the incident as a “major breach of trust” and said he was
open to further regulation of the website.
ISBA, a British group of advertisers that spend hundreds
of millions of pounds a year on Facebook, demanded answers. It is understood
that some of its 3,000 brands, which include those of the consumer goods
companies Unilever and P&G, will not tolerate association with Facebook if
it emerges that users’ data has found its way into the hands of brokers and
political campaigners without authorisation. Sources close to the trade body
said that if the company’s answers were not satisfactory, advertisers might
spend their money elsewhere. ISBA will meet Facebook executives this week.
The row centres on claims that Cambridge Analytica, the
British company embroiled in allegations of election meddling, obtained the
personal data of 50 million Americans without consent. Facebook’s lax terms
allowed app developers to access the data of users and their network of friends
with no checks to prevent it being sold on, it is claimed.
Several financial groups said that they would stop buying
Facebook shares for their ethical investment funds or were reviewing their
holdings. Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordic region, which manages about
£283 billion, said that it had put some of its Facebook investments in
“quarantine” while it assessed the scandal. Union Investment, a German group
that manages about £255 billion, said that it was reviewing its holding of
Facebook shares.
Investors are also suing Facebook, claiming that it made
“false and misleading statements” about policies that failed to prevent
Cambridge Analytica from obtaining data intended for use by a Cambridge
University researcher, Aleksandr Kogan.
A Maryland woman who said that she was “frequently
targeted with political ads while using Facebook” during the 2016 US election
filed a separate suit against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, alleging that
the companies had treated her personal data with “absolute disregard”.
Cambridge Analytica denies that it used Facebook data to “microtarget”
political adverts when it worked for the Trump campaign.
Facebook shares closed up 0.7 per cent at $169.39,
halting a slide that wiped $50 billion, or 9.2 per cent, off the company’s
value on Monday and Tuesday. Last year Facebook reported $40.7 billion in
sales, almost all of which were from digital advertising.
Mr Zuckerberg, 33, initially stopped short of apologising
but later told CNN: “This was a major breach of trust and I’m really sorry that
this happened. Our responsibility now is to make sure this doesn’t happen
again.”
In a Facebook post Mr Zuckerberg pledged to investigate
thousands of suspicious-looking apps and ban developers that refused to comply
with an audit. He added: “We will restrict developers’ data access even further
to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers’ access
to your data if you haven’t used their app in three months. We will reduce the
data you give an app when you sign in to only your name, profile photo and
email address.”
“We’ll require developers to not only get approval but
also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their private data.
We’ll have more changes to share in the next few days.”
Mr Zuckerberg added that he was open to further
regulation of internet companies and would testify before Congress if he was
best placed to answer their questions.
Matt Hancock, secretary of state for digital, culture and
media, said that the changes did not go far enough. “It shouldn’t be for a
company to decide what is the appropriate balance between privacy and
innovation and use of data. Those rules should be set by society as a whole and
so set by parliament,” he told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.
Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, led calls to
delete Facebook, which trended on Twitter. Mr Acton, whose company was bought
by Facebook for £16 billion three years ago, wrote: “It is time.
#deletefacebook”. It received 10,000 “likes”.
Damian Collins, chairman of the digital, culture, media
and sport select committee, tweeted: “Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t addressed why
Facebook didn’t deal with concerns about the exposure of user data at the time
and the risks now.”
Yesterday Dr Kogan, the Russian-linked Cambridge academic
who obtained the data of 50 million users by offering “personality quizzes”
before selling the data to Cambridge Analytica, told the BBC that “tens of
thousands” of apps could have done the same thing.
Facebook said that its audit would include every app that
has collected large amounts of data since the platform launched in 2006. “If
the audit turns up anything bad we’re going to shut the app, we’re going to
delete the data and we’re going to inform people,” Chris Cox, chief product
officer, told Today.
A Facebook whistleblower told MPs that the company had
ignored his warnings and lost control of users’ data by giving easy access to
developers. Sandy Parakilas said that when he worked at the company in 2011-12
“personal identifiable data was basically allowed to leave Facebook”. He told
MPs that he had warned executives that poor safeguards could enable foreign
powers or data brokers to harvest data.
ISBA said: “The claims that other apps using the Facebook
platform, and pre-dating 2015, have collected similar bodies of personal data
and that controls for distribution have been inadequate, raise questions about
the possibility that Facebook data has been, or is being used improperly
elsewhere. ISBA is asking Facebook for a full account.”
It was reported last night that Cambridge Analytica was
offered material by Israelis who appeared to have obtained emails from two
politicians. Staff were asked to handle material that they assumed had been
illegally gathered while working on election campaigns for candidates in
Nigeria and St Kitts and Nevis, The Guardian said. Cambridge Analytica’s parent
company, SCL Elections, denied taking possession of or using any hacked or
stolen personal data for any purpose in either campaign.
Cambridge Analytica was set up in effect as a brand name
for the company’s data analysis services in 2013.
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