Business as usual at Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg comes forth, tells us nothing we didn’t already know

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg came out and made a statement on Facebook that had no apology (though he gave a personal one later on CNN) and, at a time when people demanded transparency, he continued with opaqueness.
   First, he told us nothing we didn’t already know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
   Secondly, he avoided the most pressing points.
   No mention that Facebook had covered this up for two years. No explanation of why he failed to answer journalists about this for two years. No explanation on why Facebook tried to gag the story in The Observer by threatening legal action. No mention that it had failed, by law, to report a data breach that it knew about.
   From the clips I saw on CNN, Zuckerberg claims he wants to restrict access to developers, and he still doesn’t know if there are other Cambridge Analyticas out there. Nothing about Facebook gathering more and more data on you and using it improperly themselves, which has actually been an ongoing issue. From the clips online provided by CNN, it wasn’t a hard-hitting interview, with the journalist going very easy on the milliardaire in what amounted to a puff piece. I really hope there was more meat than what we were shown, given how much ammo there is.
   The site has countless more failings, including its bots and its bugs, but I’ve mentioned them before.
   I’m unimpressed and for once, the market agreed, with shares dipping 2·7 per cent after Zuckerberg’s first comments in the wake of the scandal.
   However, CNN Money thinks Cambridge Analytica is an anomaly, even when Facebook’s own boss says they are still to ‘make sure’ whether there are other firms out there in the same boat. ‘We’re going to go now and investigate every app that has access to a large amount of information.’ In other words, it hasn’t been done, and yet Facebook knew about this since 2015.
   The world is seeing what I and others have talked about for years: Facebook is irresponsible, it does nothing till it’s embarrassed into it, and it collects a lot of data on you even after you’ve opted out of certain features on their site.
   Not a lot has changed since 2009, when he gave this interview with the BBC. Say one thing, do another.


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