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Anthony Quintano/Flickr (CC-BY)

Everyone’s clowning on Mark Zuckerberg’s Cambridge Analytica statement

Zuckerberg says Facebook will protect our data. The internet says 'lol, sure.'

 

Jay Hathaway

Tech

Posted on Mar 22, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 9:00 pm CDT

Five days after Facebook cut off Cambridge Analytica, the firm that allegedly used Facebook data to help Donald Trump win the presidency, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finally spoken out about the data breach. For many, Facebook’s failure to protect 50 million people’s personal data from misuse by third parties was an egregious breach of trust. Zuck’s apology was too little, too late, and he’s being thoroughly roasted over it on Twitter.

Here’s the key paragraph from Zuckerberg’s statement, posted Wednesday on Facebook:

We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.

Here’s some of the brutal, clever mockery he’s facing in response to his “we won’t do it again” platitudes:

https://twitter.com/alexrkonrad/status/976548575248371714

https://twitter.com/vineyille/status/976560794480660480

Some have also pointed out that Zuck’s statement didn’t include the words “sorry” or “apology,” which is galling to those whose data Cambridge Analytica collected and apparently still holds.

Zuckerberg will go on CNN Wednesday night to further explain how Facebook plans to handle data protection going forward, starting with an audit of any “suspicious” third-party apps that collected “large amounts of data” before Facebook tightened up its rules in 2014.

It’s a rough week for Zuck—and an even rougher one for his potential run for president.

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*First Published: Mar 22, 2018, 12:16 am CDT