Taking responsibility for the massive user data breach, Facebook's chief Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday asked for a second chance saying he was still the right person to lead the social networking platform.
"Give me another chance," he told reporters during a conference call. "This a huge mistake. It's my mistake," Zuckerberg said, urging people to give the social networking platform a chance to learn from their mistakes.
"Yes. People make mistakes and learn along the way. I'm the first to admit we didn't take a broad enough view of what our responsibilities are...What people should hold us accountable for is learning from the mistakes," he said.
When asked if there was pressure from the board to step down following the scandal, Zuckerberg said he was unaware of such a development. Also, no one has been fired in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
"I have not, due to the CA situation, yet. We're still working through this. At the end of the day, this is my responsibility. There have been a bunch of questions about that. I started this place, I run it, I'm responsible for what happens here," he told reporters.
"I'm not looking to throw anyone else under the bus for mistakes we made here," he said.
On Wednesday, Facebook revealed that the data of about 87 million people may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, a London-based consultancy firm. Among these, 71 million were Americans.
"Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we've seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped," the company said in a blog post. However, it did not reveal who stole the data and how it might have been used or how many people were affected.
Zuckerberg is set to testify before a Congressional committee on data breach next week.
Anti-Racism protesters come out in support of refugees outside the Cladhan Hotel on September 13, 2025 in Falkirk, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)