Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Apologizes in Full-Page Newspaper Ads

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that broke this week, Facebook founder Mark Zucerkberg took out full-page ads in major American and British newspapers on Sunday to offer up an apology.

Here in the United States, the ad appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

“We have a responsibility to protect your information,” the ad read in large type. “If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.”

The ad went on to show a letter personally signed by Zuckerberg.

“You may have heard about a quiz app built by a university researcher that leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014,” Zuckerberg wrote. “This was a breach of trust and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. We’re now taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again. We’ve already stopped apps like this from getting so much information. Now we’re limiting the data apps get when you sign in using Facebook.

“We’re also investigation every single app that had access to large amounts of data before we fixed this. We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will band them and tell everyone affected. Finally, we’ll remind you which apps you’ve given access to your information – so you can shut off the ones you don’t want anymore.”

Zuckerberg signed off with a promise.

“Thank you for believing in this community,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I promise to do better for you.”

Facebook announced last week it was suspending Cambridge Analytica’s account over violating policies after it was reported it harvest the personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users. The company worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and is now under investigation for allegedly improperly sharing that information.

Zuckerberg broke his silence regarding the controversy with a Facebook post on Wednesday.

“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t, then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it,” Zuckerberg wrote.

The Facebook founder reportedly saw his net worth drop by $10 billion as a result of the controversy, dropping him down to seventh on Forbes’ billionaire rankings with $60 billion to his name.