Online privacy

When Zuckerberg was questioned about the company’s handling of user data and how it essentially handed it off to third parties, he demurred. “For some reason, we haven’t been able to kick this notion, for years, that people think that we sell data to advertisers,” said Zuckerberg. “We don’t.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that it will voluntarily implement the European Union's new privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which take effect in May 2018. "We're going to make all the same controls and settings available everywhere, not just in Europe," he said. Additionally, Zuckerberg specifically said the company did not "track" its users or "buy and sell" user data. "We run ads to make it a free service that everyone in the world can afford," he said.

Amid growing pressure to remove bad actors from Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would likely release more information about problematic content posted to the service during elections. But to ensure the accuracy of the data, Zuckerberg said, the reports will likely come after the elections are over. The move could help government officials, academic researchers, and concerned citizens understand whether Facebook’s increased attention to abuse is working — but the timing could make it harder for grasp what’s happening when it arguably matters most.

For years, Congress and federal regulators have allowed the world’s largest social network to police itself — with disastrous results. Here are four promising reforms under discussion in Washington: 

1. Impose Fines for Data Breaches
2. Police Political Advertising
3. Make Tech Companies Liable for Objectionable Content
4. Install Ethics Review Boards

The Facebook data of up to 87 million people – 37 million more than previously reported – may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, the company has revealed. This larger figure was buried in the penultimate paragraph of a blogpost by the company’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, published April 4, which also provided updates on the changes Facebook was making to better protect user information.

The biggest risk to Facebook — and the digital-ad business overall — would be a wide-ranging privacy-protection law on the order of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act in the banking sector. That established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, designed to keep predatory lenders in check, along with a host of new regulations.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social network had no immediate plans to apply a strict new European Union law on data privacy in its entirety to the rest of the world, as the company reels from a scandal over its handling of personal information of millions of its users. Zuckerberg sadi that Facebook already complies with many parts of the law ahead of its implementation in May. He said the company wanted to extend privacy guarantees worldwide in spirit, but would make exceptions, which he declined to describe.

No federal law spells out what companies trading in personal information can do with user data. No federal agency has clear jurisdiction over writing rules for internet companies. And public concern about personal data falling into the wrong hands has only recently swelled. Now lawmakers are feeling the heat.

A Q&A with Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University and coiner of the term "net neutrality."