Dan Broadbent 
MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA – On the heels of the Cambridge Analytica debacle that has plagued Facebook for nearly a week now, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has broken his silence to address the concerns his users have for their privacy.
Many people were outraged when they learned that around 50 million Facebook users’ data had been shared without their knowledge with Cambridge Analytica. The firm then used this information to microtarget individuals and influence the 2016 election.
In a statement posted to Twitter, Zuckerberg said “We’ve always valued people’s individual privacy, which is why ever since we decided to become a publicly traded company, we’ve viewed our user’s privacy with the utmost of importance. After all, Facebook’s users are our product, so we figured we could sell that information to the highest bidder to better benefit our shareholders.”
Zuckerberg also questioned why anyone using his platform would have any expectation of privacy.
“When you put something out on the internet, it’s vulnerable to third parties intercepting it or gaining access to it,” Zuckerberg stated. “Here at Facebook HQ, we’re mostly confused why people are surprised that this happened, rather than worried about potential fallout from it. We still have hundreds of millions of users’ information that we continue to sell access to on a regular basis. It’s our entire business model – we bring more advertisers closer to the people who matter to them, so that they can have meaningful interactions by buying their products.”
“Our user’s data is the most important commodity – without their data, how would we as a company continue to exist?”