Facebook Buys Full-Page Apology Ads

'I promise to do better for you,' Zuckerberg says
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 26, 2018 1:49 AM CDT
Facebook Buys Full-Page Apology Ads
An advertisement in The New York Times is displayed on Sunday, March 25, 2018.   (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Facebook's CEO apologized for the Cambridge Analytica scandal with ads in multiple US and British newspapers Sunday, saying the social media platform doesn't deserve to hold personal information if it can't protect it. The ads signed by Mark Zuckerberg said a quiz app built by a Cambridge University researcher leaked Facebook data of millions of people four years ago. "This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time. We're now taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again," the ads said. Facebook's privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm affiliated with President Trump's 2016 election campaign, got data inappropriately, the AP reports.

Cambridge Analytica got the data from a researcher who paid 270,000 Facebook users to complete a psychological profile quiz back in 2014. But the quiz gathered information on their friends as well, bringing the total number of people affected to about 50 million. Facebook's stock value has dropped more than $70 billion since the revelations were first published. The ads placed in newspapers including the New York Times and Washington Post said Facebook is limiting the data that apps receive when users sign in. It's also investigating every app that had access to large amounts of data. "We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected," the ads stated. Zuckerberg closed the ads by saying: "I promise to do better for you." (Elon Musk has deleted his companies' Facebook pages.)

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