By DAVID Z. MORRIS March
25, 2018
http://time.com/5235461/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ted-cruz/
Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg issued a public apology in an old-school format Sunday — via a
full-page newspaper ad in major U.S. and U.K. papers.
The ad, printed in
clear type over Zuckerberg’s signature, begins: “We have a responsibility to
protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.”
It then refers to “a
quiz app built by a university researcher that leaked Facebook data of millions
of people in 2014. 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.”
That’s a rather
mealy-mouthed summary of the Cambridge Analytica debacle, in which a ‘quiz app’
was only the tip of the spear wielded by political operatives set on
influencing the U.S. election.
Nonetheless, the ad
continues. Zuckerberg says that Facebook has “already stopped apps like this
from getting so much information. Now we’re limiting the data apps get when you
sign in using Facebook.” Zuckerberg also writes that Facebook will investigate,
ban, and inform users about other apps that had access to similarly large
amounts of data. Facebook will also provide better privacy protection by
reminding users what apps they’ve granted access to their data.
“Thank you for
believing in this community,” Zuckerberg concludes. “I promise to do better for
you.”
According to Vanity
Fair, the ad appeared in British newspapers The Observer, The Sunday Times,
Mail on Sunday, Sunday Mirror, Sunday Express, and Sunday Telegraph. In the
U.S., it appeared in print editions of The New York Times, The Washington Post,
and The Wall Street Journal.
The ad is the latest
in a weeklong series of public apologies by Zuckerberg and other execs. Such
apologies, followed by promises to do better, are getting less convincing every
time. And the surge in calls to #deletefacebook suggests users seem to be waking
up to the fact that Facebook is less a “community” than an ingenious digital
glue trap. Investors certainly seem to doubt that Facebook is going to emerge
unscathed. And all the humble apologies in the world seem unlikely to save
Zuckerberg’s political ambitions.
The irony of
Facebook’s CEO taking out a print ad to apologize for the company’s biggest
scandal ever also can’t be overlooked. Facebook grew in part by leveraging the
work of established publications, then became a major vector for manipulative
“fake news.” Now, Zuckerberg seems to be implicitly acknowledging that print
remains a valuable format when you really, actually want to be taken seriously.
http://fortune.com/2018/03/25/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ad/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
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