The Zuck then apologized for this undocumented API access leak and FB subsequently patched it out of their platform. It had nothing to do with running ads. We shouldn't let time paper over the details here.
[1] "It also gathered data from their Facebook friends, which reportedly resulted in Kogan having access to the data of millions of Facebook profiles". https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica...
I don't know if it was a psy-op or deception campaign or what.
> But when reflecting on the biggest mistakes of his career, Zuckerberg said his largest one was a “political miscalculation” that he described as a “20-year mistake.” Specifically, he said, he’d taken too much ownership for problems allegedly out of Facebook’s control. “Some of the things they were asserting that we were doing or were responsible for, I don’t actually think we were,” said Zuckerberg. “When it’s a political problem… there are people operating in good faith who are identifying a problem and want something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame.”
TechCrunch then goes on to blame Zuckerberg by insinuation. As someone who dislikes Facebook and Zuckerberg, I think Big Tech is a rather convenient boogeyman for fallout from the 2016 election & beyond.
Zuckerberg sounds a bit entitled in that interview. Yes, it was a chore having to appear in the senate and all, but he would probably not hesitate to take that same chance again if he could. As they say, all attention is good attention, and that probably goes double if you personally control the biggest social network on the planet.
In Careless People, they mentioned that this was a strategy they wanted to employ:
They wanted facebook to become a tool for winning elections so that they would have more leverage over the politicians in power.
For example, they were trying to fight the Indian government over internet.org initiative (essentially shipping out a stripped down version of the internet to impoverished areas where they could only use facebook and a couple other apps, subsidized by telecoms). They used facebook features to incite backlash against the Indian government.