9 questions Congress should ask Mark Zuckerberg; Vox, April 9, 2018

Emily Stewart, Vox; 9 questions Congress should ask Mark Zuckerberg

"In prepared testimony to the House committee released ahead of the hearing, Zuckerberg will tell lawmakers he’s sorry for what happened. “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” he plans to say.

Facebook has announced a number of steps it plans to take on its own to address concerns about its practices in recent weeks and days, including enacting new measures to prevent election meddling and spelling out its terms and data policy more clearly. Zuckerberg also took part in an hour-long Q&A session with reporters last week. All of that is likely an effort to avoid fireworks in Congress if at all possible. “I’m assuming that his people are not planning to have him break news,” Rebecca MacKinnon, an internet freedom advocate and director of Ranking Digital Rights, said. “They broke all their news last week so that he doesn’t have to break it in the hearings.”

I’ve spoken with a variety of experts, observers, and stakeholders in recent days to find out what sorts of questions Congress can and should ask."

Without data-targeted ads, Facebook would look like a pay service, Sandberg says; NBC, April 5, 2018

Alex Johnson and Erik Ortiz, NBC; Without data-targeted ads, Facebook would look like a pay service, Sandberg says

"The data of users is the lifeblood of Facebook, and if people want to opt out of all of the platform's data-driven advertising, they would have to pay for it, Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, told NBC News in an interview that aired Friday.

In an interview with "Today" co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, Sandberg again acknowledged that the company mishandled the breach that allowed Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm that worked with Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, to harvest information from as many as 87 million Facebook users."

Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs; Gizmodo, March 31, 2018

Tom McKay, Gizmodo; Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs

"The ridiculous mess over at Facebook has continued to get worse, with staff allegedly in a full-on “uproar” over the fallout of the leak of consumer hardware VP Andrew Bosworth’s 2016 memo claiming things like terrorism and cyberbullying suicides were justifiable side effects of the site’s continued growth.

Per the New York Times, what began as widespread concern over the company’s Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal has now apparently transformed into a sort of panic over possible further leaks of potentially damaging internal information like Bosworth’s memo. While some staff are urging greater transparency, others have turned to shredding emails and demanding leakers be found and dealt with..."