Here's What Mark Zuckerberg Said During Last Night's Media Blitz

Mark Zuckerberg made the rounds last night to discuss the Cambridge Analytica data leak, appearing on CNN and giving interviews to the New York Times, Wired, and Recode.

Prior to the media blitz, Zuckerberg had been silent for several days. In a Tuesday Facebook post, Zuckerberg said he'd been "working to understand exactly what happened" since the subject fabricated news on Friday, and explained what the company would exist doing nearly it.

That includes an audit of developers who accessed big troves of Facebook user information earlier 2022, when the social network's rules nigh such things were much looser. Going forward, Facebook will besides restrict how much information developers tin access.

Here'due south what else he had to say about the uproar and Facebook's future.

CNN

In an interview on CNN, Zuckerberg started with an apology: "So, this was a major alienation of trust, and I'm really sorry that this happened," he said. "Our responsibility at present is to make sure this doesn't happen once more."

Zuckerberg argued that he never expected that Facebook would one day be required to "aid protect the integrity of elections against interference by other governments." Asked whether Facebook has washed enough to protect future elections, Zuckerberg said "we will see."

He admitted that Facebook was "not as on top of a number of bug as we should've" been, from ballot meddling or fake news. He pointed to the French election, where Facebook deployed AI tools that "did a much better job of identifying Russian bots and basically Russian potential inteference, and weeding that out of the platform alee of the ballot."

Facebook also deployed new AI tools ahead of the Senate special election in Alabama to detect fake accounts trying to spread false news; there, the company uncovered accounts from Macedonia.

"This isn't rocket science," Zuckerberg argued. In that location'south piece of work to be done, "but nosotros can go far front of this, and we have a responsibilty to practise this, non simply for the 2022 midterms in the U.s. ... just there's a big ballot in India this yr, at that place's a large election in Brazil ... and yous can bet that we are actually committed to doing everything we need to to make certain the integrity of those elections on Facebook is secured."

The New York Times

When asked by the Times if he was surprised by the backfire over this issue, Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are a major part of people'south lives so whatsoever breach of trust is "rightfully a large issue and deserves to be a big uproar."

Why did he look v days? He wanted to make certain the data was "fully accurate."

Zuckerberg expects that Facebook's audit of pre-2014 apps will embrace "thousands" of them. The company likewise plans to investigate whether user data ended up on the dark web.

Equally for the #DeleteFacebook campaign, which includes WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, Zuckerberg said he hasn't seen whatever "meaningful number of people" ditch Facebook, simply "it's not good [and] we accept a responsibility to rectify," he said.

Volition that include a totally dissimilar business model? For now, Facebook is sticking to a free, ad-supported platform because not everyone can afford to pay for it. For more, check out today's episode of The Daily, a podcast from the Times that features an interview with Kevin Roose, 1 of the reporters who talked to Zuckerberg.

Wired

Overall, Zuckerberg tells Nicholas Thompson, Facebook will be implementing "probably 15 changes...to further restrict data. I didn't listing them all, because a lot of them are kind of nuanced and hard to explain—so I kind of tried to paint in broad strokes what the bug are, which were starting time, going forward, making sure developers can't go access to this kind of data."

Does Facebook think its information got into the hands of Russia's Internet Research Bureau? "I tin't really say that. I hope that nosotros will know that more certainly later on we do an audit," Zuckerberg said.

The data collected from Facebook, meanwhile, "wasn't watermarked in whatever manner," Zuckerberg said, so Facebook was not alerted when it was passed to Cambridge.

As for whether he'll go earlier Congress, Zuckerberg was coy. "If...I am the most informed person at Facebook in the all-time position to testify, I will happily practice that," but he suggested that someone from Facebook'due south legal team would be better suited to appear.

He also voiced back up for the Honest Ads Human action, which is designed to foreclose foreign governments from influencing future US elections via social media.

Recode

Recode'southward Kara Swisher pushed Zuckerberg on whether anyone at the visitor thought opening up the Facebook platform would cause problems downwards the line. "We remain idealistic," he responded. Ten years agone, Facebook was much smaller and not beingness targeted by nation-states.

As for drawing the line on hate oral communication and offensive content, "I feel fundamentally uncomfortable sitting here in California at an office, making content policy decisions for people effectually the world," he said.

"I just wish that there were a manner ... a process where we could more accurately reverberate the values of the community in different places," but Facebook hasn't quite figured that 1 out however.

Ultimately, the audit volition "cost many millions of dollars and have a number of months," Zuckerberg told Swisher, and then stay tuned.

About Chloe Albanesius

Chloe Albanesius

Chloe has led PCMag'due south news coverage for more than 10 years, editing and writing stories about the innovations that have shaped the last decade and the companies behind them. She also oversees the site's how-to coverage. Before joining PCMag.com, Chloe was a reporter covering tech policy on Capitol Hill for The National Journal'due south Engineering Daily and financial Information technology for Incisive Media in NYC. She's held internships at NBC's Run into the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C.