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Mark Zuckerberg has hit back at the testimony of the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, saying her claims the company puts profit over people’s safety are “just not true”. In a blogpost, the Facebook founder and chief executive addressed one of the most damaging statements in Haugen’s opening speech to US senators on Tuesday, that Facebook puts “astronomical profits before people”.
Facebook has apologized for the mass outage that left billions of users unable to access Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger for several hours. The outage, which prevented users from refreshing their feeds or sending messages, was caused by “configuration changes on the backbone routers,” said Santosh Janardhan, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure, in a blogpost late Monday, without specifying exactly what the changes were.
A former Facebook whistleblower responsible for a series of bombshell leaks has revealed her identity. Frances Haugen, 37, who worked as a product manager on the civic integrity team at Facebook, was interviewed on Sunday by CBS. She said the documents she leaked proved that Facebook repeatedly prioritized “growth over safety”. Facebook said the leaks were misleading and glossed over positive research conducted by the company.
The European Union and the U.K. have launched antitrust investigations into Facebook’s use of advertising data in its classified ads business, probes which could force it to change its business model on top of hefty fines. The European Commission and Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority are investigating whether Facebook uses data from advertisers to compete with them.
Details of more than 500 million Facebook users – 11 million from the UK – have been found on a website for hackers. Although the information appears to be several years old, it includes data from 106 countries such as phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates and email addresses. In a statement, Facebook said: “This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. “We found and fixed this issue in August 2019.”
Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work. They’re hearing Facebook users’ conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said. Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users’ audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies.
Mark Zuckerberg faced difficult questions from EU political leaders in a hearing on Tuesday for Facebook’s recent privacy mishaps. European lawmakers suggested a split from Facebook and complained that Zuckerberg repeated his previous statements, evading specific questions. Zuckerberg began the meeting by apologizing to the European Parliament for Facebook’s role in the spreading of misinformation.
Despite experiencing a major crisis and investigation into its privacy policies, Facebook’s net profit has reached an all-time high of $4.9 billion. The company’s first quarter saw a 63% increase in profit and 49% increase in revenue resulting from mobile advertising growth. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is ‘off to a strong start in 2018.’
In the aftermath of Facebook’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica, officials are demanding that Facebook reveals more about its privacy policy, with the Federal Trade Commission confirming an official investigation causing Facebook’s stock to fall. The Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a hearing on the ‘future of data privacy and social media,’ targeting Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
Formal investigation into Facebook’s involvement in mishandling user information is being opened by the Federal Trade Commission, with American and European politicians calling on Mark Zuckerberg to testify. The FTC investigation comes from the fallout of Cambridge Analytica’s controversial Trump campaign data access tactics and has caused Facebook’s value to be cut by $50 billion.