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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admits committing mistakes, chalks out measures to do some damage control

As a matter of fact, Facebook has taken imperative measures to avert such scenario from recurring, said Zuckerberg. For instance, in the year 2014, it cut on to the access that the other apps had to its data.

After maintaining silence for more than four days, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook seemed to have come to terms with his mistakes and chalked out measures so as to shield the user data in the wake of a privacy scandal that involves a data-mining firm that was connected to presidential campaigns of Trump.

Zuckerberg, taking complete “responsibility” for shielding the data of its users and stated failing to do that, “we don’t deserve to serve you”.

Sheryl Sandberg, No.2 executive of Facebook has been silent ever since the news came out on Friday that the data mining firm of Cambridge Analytica may have made improper use of data to get hold of at least 50 million users so as to influence the elections.

As a matter of fact, Facebook has taken imperative measures to avert such scenario from recurring, said Zuckerberg. For instance, in the year 2014, it cut on to the access that the other apps had to its data. Yet, some of the measures it had taken did not seem to be effective until a year later, permitting to access the data in the prevailing months.

More so, Zuckerberg took cognizance of the fact, that there are many more steps that the company needs to take.

He also stated in a Facebook post that the platform will ban the developers who don’t concede to an audit. The developer of an app will not have access anymore from people who haven’t used it in 3 months. Moreover, the data will be generally restricted email address, usernames and profile photo, until such time that the developer signs a contract with Facebook and gets approval from the user.

Further, the academic who had developed the app of Cambridge Analytica for harvesting data stated he had no clue that his app would be used in the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in the year 2016.

On the other hand, Alexandr Kogan who is a researcher of psychology at the Cambridge University, told it to the BBC that both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have tried planting a blame on him for the violation of the terms of service of the social media platforms, albeit the data mining firm had reassured him that whatever was being done was completely legal.

In addition to this, Alexander Nix, head of Cambridge Analytica was yesterday suspended after Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast hidden camera footage of him stating the company could use young women to entrap politicians in objectionable positions. The footage also showed Nix flaunting how the company was instrumental in Trump’s campaign. However, he said that the firm handled “all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting” for Trump’s campaign and used emails quipped with “self-destruct timer” to make it more tedious to trace the firm’s role.

He further said, “There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing”.

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