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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has assured that he wants to ensure protection of integrity of elections, mentioning that he knows the importance of the upcoming polls in countries, including India.
The founder of the social media platform, who has been mired in controversies since news of data leak became public, appeared before US lawmakers on Tuesday. He apologised on behalf of his company for privacy breaches, promised change and explained the steps the social media giant is taking to stem the rot.
Here are some of his key quotes:
Apology:
“We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here.”
Facebook's folly:
“It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech.”
“When we heard back from Cambridge Analytica that they were not using the data and deleted it, we considered it a closed case. In retrospect, that was clearly a mistake. We shouldn't have taken their word for it. We have updated our policy to make sure we do not make that mistake again”
Setting things straight:
“It will take some time to work through all the changes we need to make across the company. I am committed to getting this right.”
Russia’s election interference:
In his opening statement, Zuckerberg addressed Russian election interference and acknowledged that the company was too slow to respond and that it's "working hard to get better."
“There are people in Russia whose job is to try to exploit our systems and other internet systems, and other systems, as well. So this is an arms race, right? I mean, they're going to keep on getting better at this, and we need to invest in keeping on getting better at this, too, which is why one of things I mentioned before is we're going to have more than 20,000 people, by the end of this year, working on security and content review across the company.”
Commitment to ensure integrity of elections:
“2018 is an incredibly important year for elections. Not just in the US mid-terms, but, around the world, there are important elections -- in India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and Hungary -- and we want to make sure we do everything we can to protect the integrity of these elections.”
He also said the company is investigating every app that had access to a large amount of information before the company moved to prevent such access in 2014 - actions that came too late in the Cambridge Analytica case.
(With inputs from news agencies)
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