Facebook has taken its apologies for the Cambridge Analytica scandal offline.
Against a plain white background, the social network issued an apology by taking out a full page advert on the pages of the UK’s largest newspapers—The Observer, The Mail on Sunday, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday Express. It read:
We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.
You may have heard about a quiz app built by a university researched 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.
We’ve already stopped apps like this from getting so much information. Now we’re limiting the data apps get when you sign in using Facebook.
We’re also investigating every single app that had access to large amounts of data before we fixed this. We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected.
Finally, we’ll remind you which apps you’ve given access to your information – so you can shut off the ones you don’t want anymore.
Thank you for believing in this community. I promise to do better for you.
It was signed by the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, with a small Facebook logo underneath.
Facebook has seen more than $60 billion wiped off of its valuation over fears that the scandal will result in regulations on the digital advertising industry, dragging down the stock prices of other tech giants as well. Zuckerberg has already delivered a seemingly non-apology, saying many things have already been fixed and more changes are on the way, amid repeated calls for him to testify before Congress. The hashtag #DeleteFacebook has trended on Twitter.
This week in Britain, Cambridge Analytica’s London headquarters was searched by enforcement officials from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office. The firm has been accused of using the personal data of millions of Facebook users to sway the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum. Cambridge Analytica denies any wrongdoing.