Facebook founder testifies

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg owned up to U.S. senators today that the social network didn’t do enough to protect users information from groups looking to spread hate or in one particular case, sway an election.

“It was my mistake and I’m sorry, I started Facebook, I run it and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, gathered personal information from 87 million users to try to influence the outcome of the election. Over 600 000 Canadians information was improperly shared. Zuckerberg told senators that his team flagged the issue the year before.

“We took down the app and we demanded that the app developer and Cambridge Analytica delete and stop using any data that they had. They told us that they did this, in retrospect it was clearly a mistake for us to believe them.”

The 33-year old billionaire also confirmed that Facebook has been summoned by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in relation to possible Russian meddling with the election.

While the investigation continues, Zuckerberg assured senators that his company is taking measures to ensure that fake news doesn’t spread.

“Now you’re going to be able to go and click on any advertiser or page on Facebook and see any ads they’re running on Facebook. So that actually brings advertising online to a higher standard than what you’d see on T.V or print media.”

This was the the first of two congressional hearings with Zuckerberg. He’ll testify at the house of representatives committee on energy and commerce tomorrow.