Facebook needs ‘a few years’ to fix problems, says Zuckerberg

The social network is hoping to prevent further misuse of ill-gotten data after Dr. Aleksandr Kogan’s app that pulled data on 50 million Facebook users was passed to Cambridge Analytica in violation of Facebook policy.

Facebook is scrambling to add safeguards against abuse of user data as it reels from backlash over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “And not at all aligned with the truth”.

Zuckerberg went on to say that Bosworth is a ‘talented leader who says many provocative things, ‘ but said the memo was something that ‘most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly’.

Zuckerberg and Facebook had already been feeling the heat from all sides – politicians, advertisers, shareholders, former employees and more – in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, which put the company in the spotlight as a platform that helped spread Russian-linked disinformation and propaganda. He also called into question how honest Apple really is when it comes to caring about customers, at least in relation to Facebook. I think it’s… privacy to us is a human right.

“If you really don’t want all your data and all your contact information to be constantly quantified, your best bet is to move out to Idaho, throw away your phone and never get connected to the internet again”, he said, adding that Facebook is not the only platform using personal information to target users. He said, “There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less”.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has added further to the woes of the social networking giant, which was already facing scrutiny over the alleged use of the platform by Russian trolls to impact the USA presidential election. Klein asked Zuckerberg during the Vox interview. In what is touted as the nadir in the social media world, the internet giants expressed deep pain in terminating Facebook but said business as usual could not have gone on in such an environment of mistrust where in government after government was hell bent to destroy Facebook. The resulting outrage has led to a decline in the company’s stock price.

Whether the damage to Facebook’s reputation with its users, including news organizations, can be alleviated is the question no one is yet prepared to answer. The settlement required Facebook to take several steps to make sure it maintained promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers’ express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.

That would be Channel 4 in London, which along with the Guardian newspaper broke the story of Facebook’s data disaster earlier this month, leading the company to lose $100 billion dollars U.S. in value since it’s yearly high in early February. Facebook’s tactics were also an unpleasant reminder of the way it and other huge corporations – including Google and Apple – have avoided paying tax with the same offshore jurisdiction defence.

“If you were in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper”, he said.