Facebook said yesterday that 87's personal information millions of users, mostly in the United States, may have been mistakenly exchanged with the Cambridge Analytica policy consulting firm, compared to a previous estimate of over 50 million in media.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call with reporters that Facebook saw "no significant impact" on usage or sales after the scandal announcements, though he added, "it's not good" if customers don't. they are happy with the company.
Shares however rose by more than 3% after the scandal. Zuckerberg told reporters that he accepted the blame for the data leak, which angered users, advertisers and lawmakers, also saying he was still the right person to run the company he founded.
“When you're building something like Facebook that is unprecedented in the world, there will also be negative things,” said Zuckerberg, adding that the important thing is to learn from mistakes.
He said he was not aware of any discussion on the Facebook wall about him by the shareholders.
He said he hadn't fired anyone for the scandal and had no intention of doing so. “I'm not trying to throw anyone else under the bus for the mistakes we've made here,” he said.
Facebook recognized for the first time last month that personal information about millions of users ended up unjustly in the hands of Cambridge Analytica.
Zuckerberg will testify of the matter next Tuesday and Wednesday during two US Congressional hearings.
Cambridge Analytica, based in London, who treated the US president Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, challenged Facebook's estimate of interested users. On Wednesday he said on Twitter that he had received no more than 30 million records from a hired researcher to collect data on people on Facebook.
Zuckerberg, urged by journalists, said that Facebook should do more to monitor and supervise third-party app developers like the one that Cambridge Analytica hired in 2014.
“Knowing what I know today, clearly we should have done more,” he said.
Facebook is taking steps to limit the personal data available to third-party app developers, he said, and it may take another two years to resolve these issues.
"We are expanding our vision of our responsibility," said Zuckerberg.
Most of the more than 87 million people whose data have been shared with Cambridge Analytica are resident in the United States, Facebook tech director Mike Schroepfer wrote in a blog post.
Facebook shares closed the 0,6 percent on Wednesday for $ 155,10. They have plummeted over 16% since the Cambridge Analytica scandal exploded.
The previous estimate of more than 50 million Facebook users affected by the data leak came from two newspapers, the New York Times and the London Observer, based on their investigation of Cambridge Analytica.
According to Zuckerberg, Facebook reached the highest estimate by looking at the number of people who downloaded a personality quiz application created by the Cambridge University Academic College made by Aleksandr Kogan.
Cambridge Analytica said it committed Kogan "in good faith" to collecting Facebook data in a similar way to how other third-party app developers collected personal information.
The scandal sparked investigations by the Office of the British Information Commissioner, the Australian Privacy Commissioner and the United States Federal Trade Commission and some 37 US lawyers.
The government of Nigeria will investigate allegations of improper involvement by Cambridge Analytica in that country's 2007 and 2015 elections, a chairman of the presidency said today.