Facebook has been the center of controversy lately with the emergence of a report claiming that the data of more than 50 million people had been mined by analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. Now, new statistics from Facebook have surfaced, claiming that the number of affected users may be over 87 million.
In a press conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailed that:
Today, given what we know... I think we understand that we need to take a broader view of our responsibility.
[...] That we"re not just building tools, but that we need to take full responsibility for the outcomes of how people use those tools as well.
According to the latest figures, 81% of the 87 million people resided in the US. The detailed stats are as follows:
| Country | Potentially affected accounts |
|---|---|
| United States | 70,632,350 (81.6%) |
| Philippines | 1,175,870 (1.4%) |
| Indonesia | 1,096,666 (1.3%) |
| United Kingdom | 1,079,031 (1.2%) |
| Mexico | 789,880 (0.9%) |
| Canada | 622,161 (0.7%) |
| India | 562,455 (0.6%) |
| Brazil | 443,117 (0.5%) |
| Vietnam | 427,446 (0.5%) |
| Australia | 311,127 (0.4%) |
It is important to note that the figures above are estimates of the maximum number of people that may have been affected.
Moving forward, Facebook is modifying many of its APIs - including Events, Groups, and Instagram Platform, among others - to restrict third-party applications from accessing sensitive data. However, the firm isn"t ending its efforts here; Zuckerberg has gone on to say that "clearly we should have done more, and we will going forward".
Source: BBC