Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed contrition
for allowing third-party apps to grab the data of its users without
their permission and for being “too slow to spot and respond to Russian
interference” during the U.S. election, according to his prepared
remarks published by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Zuckerberg
plans to open his remarks with a familiar recitation of the social
media platform’s ability to link far-flung people together but then
pivot into an acknowledgment of Facebook’s increasingly visible dark
side.
“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough
to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well,” Zuckerberg
plans to tell lawmakers. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference
in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.
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.”
The testimony’s release, ahead of the first of two hearings this week,
came as a suit-clad Zuckerberg and some of his top lobbyists and
aides made the rounds on Capitol Hill, huddling with lawmakers who
planned to grill him Tuesday and Wednesday. The meetings included a
session with Sen. Bill Nelson (Fla.), the top Democrat on the Commerce
Committee, as a cluster of reporters waited outside.
Exiting that meeting,
Zuckerberg ignored shouted questions from reporters. Nelson afterward
said he pressed the Facebook chief executive on everything from its
privacy practices to the efforts by Russian agents to spread
disinformation on social media during the 2016 election.
“If we don’t rein in the misuse of social media, none of us are going to have any privacy anymore,” Nelson said.
The
company has been reeling since the November 2016 election, during which
phony news reports spread widely on its platform and Russian operatives
mounted an ambitious campaign to divide American voters, damage
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and bolster the chances of
Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Facebook
appeared to be recovering from those controversies until last month’s
revelation that a political consultancy hired by Trump and other
Republicans improperly gained access to data on 87 million Facebook
users, including 71 million Americans. The company acknowledged last
week a separate problem in which “malicious actors” were able to
identify and collect data on Facebook users on such a massive scale that
most of the company’s 2.2 billion users were affected.
As the company has mobilized to quell rising political opposition,
including the possibility of major legislation affecting how technology
companies handle user data, Facebook also is battling government
investigations in the United States and Europe. The Federal Trade
Commission is investigating alleged violations of a 2011 consent decree
over privacy policy at Facebook that could lead to record fines against the company.
The release of the testimony, for Wednesday’s
appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is part of a
major public relations push by Facebook to acknowledge its failings in
protecting user privacy and not acting quickly enough to thwart several
Russian disinformation campaigns, including one during the 2016
presidential election.
Zuckerberg was scheduled
to meet with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Commerce
Committee, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the
Judiciary Committee. The Facebook chief executive also planned to appear
before a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday. Those remarks are
expected to be similar.
“It’s not enough to
just connect people, we have to make sure those connections are
positive,” Zuckerberg plans to say in his testimony. “It’s not enough to
just give people a voice, we have to make sure people aren’t using it
to hurt people or spread misinformation. It’s not enough to give people
control of their information, we have to make sure developers they’ve
given it to are protecting it too.”
Facebook has announced measures in recent weeks to
tighten how it handles user data, bring new transparency to who is
behind political advertising and work more openly with outside
researchers, who long have complained that the company’s platform was
walled off from meaningful analysis of its content and impacts.
The
company on Monday also began notifying users whose data was improperly
shared with Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy hired by
Trump and other Republicans. The kind of data-sharing that Cambridge
Analytica took advantage of in 2014 was widespread among app developers
before Facebook began tightening its data-use policies that year. Before
the changes, outside app developers could gain access to a wide range
of user data — including their full names, home towns, work histories,
religious affiliations and Facebook “likes” — without the explicit
permission of most users.
Among the pledges
made by Zuckerberg is a promise to better protect Facebook from
exploitation in time to safeguard the 2018 congressional election.
Here are Zuckerberg’s prepared remarks, as released by the House committee:
HEARING BEFORE THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
April 11, 2018
Testimony of Mark Zuckerberg
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Facebook
I. INTRODUCTION
Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Pallone, and Members of the Committee,
We
face a number of important issues around privacy, safety, and
democracy, and you will rightfully have some hard questions for me to
answer. Before I talk about the steps we’re taking to address them, I
want to talk about how we got here.
Facebook is
an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we
focused on all the good that connecting people can bring. As Facebook
has grown, people everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool to stay
connected to the people they love, make their voices heard, and build
communities and businesses. Just recently, we’ve seen the #metoo
movement and the March for Our Lives, organized, at least in part, on
Facebook. After Hurricane Harvey, people raised more than $20 million
for relief. And more than 70 million small businesses now use Facebook
to grow and create jobs.
But 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, as well as developers and data privacy. 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.
So now we
have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make
sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility.
It’s
not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure those
connections are positive. It’s not enough to just give people a voice,
we have to make sure people aren’t using it to hurt people or spread
misinformation. It’s not enough to give people control of their
information, we have to make sure developers they’ve given it to are
protecting it too. Across the board, we have a responsibility to not
just build tools, but to make sure those tools are used for good.
It will take some time to work through all of the changes we need to make, but I’m committed to getting it right.
That
includes improving the way we protect people’s information and
safeguard elections around the world. Here are a few key things we’re
doing:
II. CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA
Over
the past few weeks, we’ve been working to understand exactly what
happened with Cambridge Analytica and taking steps to make sure this
doesn’t happen again. We took important actions to prevent this from
happening again today four years ago, but we also made
mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.
mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.
A. What Happened
In
2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps
should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends’
birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your
address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people
to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information
about them.
In 2013, a Cambridge University
researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was
installed by around 300,000 people who agreed to share some of their
Facebook information as well as some information from their friends
whose privacy settings allowed it. Given the way our platform worked at
the time this meant Kogan was able to access some information about tens
of millions of their friends.
In 2014, to
prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire
platform to dramatically limit the Facebook information apps could
access. Most importantly, apps like Kogan’s could no longer ask for
information about a person’s friends unless their friends had also
authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from
Facebook before they could request any data beyond a user’s public
profile, friend list, and email address. These actions would prevent any
app like Kogan’s from being able to access as much Facebook data today.
In
2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared
data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies
for developers to share data without people’s consent, so we immediately
banned Kogan’s app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and other
entities he gave the data to, including Cambridge Analytica, formally
certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data — which they
ultimately did.
Last month, we learned from The
Guardian, the New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may
not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned
them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they
have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a
firm we hired to investigate this. We’re also working with the U.K.
Information Commissioner’s Office, which has jurisdiction over Cambridge
Analytica, as it completes its investigation into what happened.
B. What We Are Doing
We
have a responsibility to make sure what happened with Kogan and
Cambridge Analytica doesn’t happen again. Here are some of the steps
we’re taking:
Safeguarding our platform.
We need to make sure that developers like Kogan who got access to a lot
of information in the past can’t get access to as much information
going forward.
- We made some big changes to the Facebook platform in 2014 to dramatically restrict the amount of data that developers can access and to proactively review the apps on our platform. This makes it so a developer today can’t do what Kogan did years ago.
- But there’s more we can do here to limit the
information developers can access and put more safeguards in place to
prevent abuse.
- We’re removing developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in three months.
- We’re reducing the data you give an app when you approve it to only your name, profile photo, and email address. That’s a lot less than apps can get on any other major app platform.
- We’re requiring developers to not only get approval but also to sign a contract that imposes strict requirements in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data.
- We’re restricting more APIs like groups and
events. You should be able to sign into apps and share your public
information easily, but anything that might also share other people’s
information — like other posts in groups
you’re in or other people going to events you’re going to — will be much more restricted. - Two weeks ago, we found out that a feature that lets you look someone up by their phone number and email was abused. This feature is useful in cases where people have the same name, but it was abused to link people’s public Facebook information to a phone number they already had. When we found out about the abuse, we shut this feature down.
Investigating other apps.
We’re in the process of investigating every app that had access to a
large amount of information before we locked down our platform in 2014.
If we detect suspicious activity, we’ll do a full forensic audit. And if
we find that someone is
improperly using data, we’ll ban them and tell everyone affected.
improperly using data, we’ll ban them and tell everyone affected.
Building better controls.
Finally, we’re making it easier to understand which apps you’ve allowed
to access your data. This week we started showing everyone a list of
the apps you’ve used and an easy way to revoke their permissions to your
data. You can already
do this in your privacy settings, but we’re going to put it at the top of News Feed to make sure everyone sees it. And we also told everyone whose Facebook information may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica.
do this in your privacy settings, but we’re going to put it at the top of News Feed to make sure everyone sees it. And we also told everyone whose Facebook information may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica.
Beyond the
steps we had already taken in 2014, I believe these are the next steps
we must take to continue to secure our platform.
III. RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE
Facebook’s
mission is about giving people a voice and bringing people closer
together. Those are deeply democratic values and we’re proud of them. I
don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That’s not
what we stand for.
We were too slow to spot and
respond to Russian interference, and we’re working hard to get better.
Our sophistication in handling these threats is growing and improving
quickly. We will continue working with the government to understand the
full extent of Russian interference, and we will do our part not only to
ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world, but
also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for good in democracy
everywhere.
A. What Happened
Elections
have always been especially sensitive times for our security team, and
the 2016 U.S. presidential election was no exception.
Our
security team has been aware of traditional Russian cyber threats —
like hacking and malware — for years. Leading up to Election Day in
November 2016, we detected and dealt with
several threats with ties to Russia. This included activity by a group called APT28, that the U.S. government has publicly linked to Russian military intelligence services.
several threats with ties to Russia. This included activity by a group called APT28, that the U.S. government has publicly linked to Russian military intelligence services.
But while our primary focus was on
traditional threats, we also saw some new behavior in the summer of 2016
when APT28-related accounts, under the banner of DC Leaks, created fake
personas that were used to seed stolen information to journalists. We
shut these accounts down for violating our policies.
After
the election, we continued to investigate and learn more about these
new threats. What we found was that bad actors had used coordinated
networks of fake accounts to interfere in the election: promoting or
attacking specific candidates and causes, creating distrust in political
institutions, or simply spreading confusion. Some of these bad actors
also used our ads tools.
We also learned about a
disinformation campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) — a
Russian agency that has repeatedly acted deceptively and tried to
manipulate people in the US, Europe, and Russia. We found about 470
accounts and pages linked to the IRA, which generated around 80,000
Facebook posts over about a two-year period.
Our
best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been
served content from a Facebook Page associated with the IRA at some
point during that period. On Instagram, where our data on reach is not
as complete, we found about 120,000 pieces of content, and estimate that
an additional 20 million people were likely served it.
Over
the same period, the IRA also spent approximately $100,000 on more than
3,000 ads on Facebook and Instagram, which were seen by an estimated 11
million people in the United States. We shut down these IRA accounts in
August 2017.
B. What We Are Doing
There’s
no question that we should have spotted Russian interference earlier,
and we’re working hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Our actions
include:
Building new technology to prevent abuse.
Since 2016, we have improved our techniques to prevent nation states
from interfering in foreign elections, and we’ve built more advanced AI
tools to remove fake accounts more generally. There have been a number
of
important elections since then where these new tools have been successfully deployed.
For example:
important elections since then where these new tools have been successfully deployed.
For example:
- In France, leading up to the presidential election in 2017, we found and took down 30,000 fake accounts.
- In Germany, before the 2017 elections, we worked directly with the election commission to learn from them about the threats they saw and to share information.
- In the U.S. Senate Alabama special election last year, we deployed new AI tools that proactively detected and removed fake accounts from Macedonia trying to spread misinformation.
- We
have disabled thousands of accounts tied to organized, financially
motivated fake news spammers. These investigations have been used to
improve our automated systems that find fake accounts. Last week, we
took down more than 270 additional pages and accounts operated
by the IRA and used to target people in Russia and Russian speakers in countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Some of the pages we removed belong to Russian news organizations that we determined were controlled by the IRA.
Significantly increasing our investment in security. We now have about 15,000 people working on security and content review. We’ll have more than 20,000 by the end of this year.
- I’ve directed our teams to invest so much in security — on top of the other investments we’re making — that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward. But I want to be clear about what our priority is: protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits.
Strengthening our advertising policies.
We know some Members of Congress are exploring ways to increase
transparency around political or issue advertising, and we’re happy to
keep working with Congress on that. But we aren’t waiting for
legislation to act.
- From now on, every
advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be
authorized. To get authorized, advertisers will need to confirm their
identity and location. Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be
prohibited from running
political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We’re starting this in the U.S. and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months. - For even greater political ads transparency, we have also built a tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running. We’re testing this in Canada now and we’ll launch it globally this summer. We’re also creating a searchable archive of past political ads.
- We will also require people who manage large pages to be verified as well. This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts, or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way.
- In order to require verification for all of these pages and advertisers, we will hire thousands of more people. We’re committed to getting this done in time for the critical months before the 2018 elections in the U.S. as well as elections in Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and elsewhere in the next year.
- These
steps by themselves won’t stop all people trying to game the system.
But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians
did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads.
Election interference is
a problem that’s bigger than any one platform, and that’s why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online.
Sharing information.
We’ve been working with other technology companies to share information
about threats, and we’re also cooperating with the U.S. and foreign
governments on election integrity.
At the same
time, it’s also important not to lose sight of the more straightforward
and larger ways Facebook plays a role in elections.
In
2016, people had billions of interactions and open discussions on
Facebook that may never have happened offline. Candidates had direct
channels to communicate with tens of millions of citizens. Campaigns
spent tens of millions of dollars organizing and advertising online to
get their messages out further. And we organized “get out the vote”
efforts that helped more than 2
million people register to vote who might not have voted otherwise.
million people register to vote who might not have voted otherwise.
Security
— including around elections — isn’t a problem you ever fully solve.
Organizations like the IRA are sophisticated adversaries who are
constantly evolving, but we’ll keep improving our techniques to stay
ahead. And we’ll also keep building tools to help more people make their
voices heard in the democratic process.
IV. CONCLUSION
My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together. Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as I’m running Facebook.
My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together. Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as I’m running Facebook.
I started Facebook when I
was in college. We’ve come a long way since then. We now serve more
than 2 billion people around the world, and every day, people use our
services to stay connected with the people that matter to them most. I
believe deeply in what we’re doing. And when we address these
challenges, I know we’ll look back and view helping people connect and
giving more people a voice as a positive force in the world.
I realize the issues we’re talking about today aren’t just issues for
Facebook and our community — they’re challenges for all of us as
Americans. Thank you for having me here today, and I’m ready to take
your questions.
![Adele photographed in 2015.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"27","h":"18","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAfRhzR.img?h=179&w=270&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"}})
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