Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg during his congressional hearing on Tuesday said he knows the importance of the upcoming elections in countries such as India, Hungary and Brazil and vowed to protect the integrity of the elections in these nations.
Zuckerberg, 33, also apologised for the scandal that erupted after it was revealed that British consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica had hijacked the data of millions of Facebook users.
"It was my mistake, and I'm sorry," the Facebook CEO said.
However, Indians in the US are reportedly not too happy with Zuckerberg's apology, with many saying it was too little, too late.
For instance, Satyan, a veteran entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, California, feels that the social media giant has always been aware of its privacy glitches. “Rather than face the music early on, they made it a business decision to shove it under the rug. Their apologies are meaningless,” he said, reported First Post. Satyan also feels that Facebook may have caused Brexit as well. “We advertise our products on Facebook and know very well how their advert system works,” he added.
IT professional Babu Chimata blames Facebook for Donald Trump's win in the 2016 elections. “These guys are the ones who made Trump, who changed the dynamics of this country. For me it’s not a privacy issue anymore – they harvested our data and targeted a segment that pushed his win by using behavioral analytics – That’s why Trump was consistently hitting on this segment, generating controversy that was picked up and mass-circulated by a very willing media. The Russian bots targeted Twitter too, but the impact through Facebook was much, much more,” Chimata said.
Zuckerberg on Tuesday revealed that Facebook was "working with" special counsel Robert Mueller in the federal probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. The social media giant was also working to change its own operations after the harvesting of users' private data by Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook has already begun alerting its users if their data was used by Cambridge Analytica. A notification that appeared for some users on Tuesday informed them that "one of your friends" used Facebook to log into a now-banned personality quiz app called "This Is Your Digital Life."
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