(Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS)

OTTAWA — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a public apology Wednesday for his company’s handling of users’ personal information — including more than 620,000 Canadians — as the social media giant faced a growing international uproar over the questionable use of personal data for political purposes. Last September, Facebook disclosed that it had suspended about 470 “inauthentic accounts” that it believed were “likely operated out of Russia” and had purchased 3,000 ads which “appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages.”

And on Wednesday, the social media platform said the personal information of up to 87 million users, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, up from a previous news media estimate of more than 50 million. “That, to me, was the failure.”

The breach was a stunning admission for a company already reeling from allegations that the political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica inappropriately accessed data on as many as 87 million Facebook users to influence elections. But she said it might be a good time to “reflect on what we are sharing and how we are sharing it and whether we need to.”

“Just because someone asks us information, it doesn’t mean we have to give it to them if we are not comfortable,” she said. “And it would be a mistake to think they’re going to give up or stop doing what they’re doing.”

His comments capped a whirlwind day of news in which Facebook reported that up to 87 million of its users may have had their data improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm connected to President Trump’s election campaign. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Facebook’s acknowledgement that most of its 2.2 billion members have probably had their personal data scraped by “malicious actors” is the latest example of the social network’s failure to protect its users’ data. Facebook describes the data taken by scrapers as “public.”

It’s one of several revealing details to come out of the hourlong conference call with reporters – others include that nobody has lost their job over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and that Zuckerberg considers himself a “power user of the internet.”

You can read the entire transcript of the discussion below or on Facebook’s site:
Facebook suspends AggregateIQ, a Canadian data firm, over concerns about possible data misuse. AggregateIQ was used by the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.