Facebook’s COO said in a series of interviews that the company is looking for other bad actors, but so far hasn’t found any. Meanwhile, it’s trying to reassure everyone.
Facebook hasn’t found other companies that leaked data like Cambridge Analytica did, said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in a series of interviews published Thursday.
The statement speaks to a larger concern that many experts have expressed since The New York Times and The Guardian’s Observer publication reported that UK-based Cambridge Analytica had improperly received information on millions of Facebook users. On Wednesday, the company said it counted as many as 87 million Facebook profiles that may have been caught up in the widening Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook also said it’s possible that public information for many of its 2 billion monthly users may also have been collected by other firms.
Facebook will continue to work with political advertisers, and will still aim to be «neutral» when assessing content — just more careful, Sandberg said.
«If you were using hate-based language in ads for elections, we’re drawing those lines much tighter and applying them uniformly,» she said. But, Sandberg said in an interview with BuzzFeed published Thursday that Facebook hasn’t found other Cambridge Analytica-like activity yet.
«As we find more Cambridge Analyticas, we’re going to find a comprehensive way to put them out and make sure people see them,» Sandberg said. «So far, we don’t have another clear case to share.»
The interviews came a day after Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and co-founder, spoke to press for about an hour on a conference call to answer questions about the scandal. In it, he admitted the company had not taken user’s privacy and security seriously enough, and had not anticipated the malicious things that ultimately happened on Facebook.
«Life is about learning from mistakes,» Zuckerberg said during Wednesday’s call. «At the end of the day, this is my responsibility. I started this place, I run it, I’m responsible.»
Sandberg in an interview with Bloomberg also published Thursday, said that while Facebook is attempting to respond to the fallout in the press, it’s also reassuring advertising partners who were unsettled by what had happened.
«We’ve seen a few advertisers pause with us and they’re asking the same questions that other people are asking,» Sandberg said.
The company is also planning to rework the way it handles political ads, she said. «If you were using hate-based language in ads for elections, we’re drawing those lines much tighter and applying them uniformly.»
Cambridge Analytica: Everything you need to know about Facebook’s data mining scandal. iHate: CNET looks at how intolerance is taking over the internet.
