Even Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t avoid the Cambridge Analytica data leak.
The Facebook CEO told the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Wednesday morning he was one of the 87 million users that had their data unwittingly accessed by the political firm in 2014. Cambridge Analytica later used its harvested info to target users during the 2016 U.S. election while working for the Trump campaign.
“Was your data included in the data sold to the malicious third parties?” asked Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA).
The exchange came during a series of yes-no questions from Eshoo. When asked if Facebook had a “moral responsibility” to protect user privacy, Zuckerberg said it does. He then said he wasn’t aware of any other third-party data leaks, similar to the Cambridge Analytica situation, but that the company was undergoing a full audit.
Later, Zuckerberg said the company was “looking into” suing the firm, as well as Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge professor that passed along the user info to Cambridge Analytica.
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
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