“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. “I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

The Facebook founder has been facing a growing number of calls to appear before UK, EU and US parliamentarians and legislators, as the social network faces increasing scrutiny from the powers-that-be over its handling of data, influence over users, role in the democratic process and ability to police extremist content.

Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, shared Zuckerberg’s post and added her own comment: “We know that this was a major violation of peoples’ trust, and I deeply regret that we didn’t do enough to deal with it.”

The Final Straw

The fact that the now disgraced political influencing firm Cambridge Analytica illicitly used around 50 million Facebook users’ data, appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Reports that Facebook knew about, or at least suspected, the data had not been deleted as it should have been, may be hook legislators need to begin action against the tech giant.

The scandal has so far wiped almost $50 billion off Facebook’s value, with stock prices plummeting since the first news was released. The company’s Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos is also leaving the company over disagreements about the company’s security strategy.

Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Zuckerberg told reporter Laurie Segall that it will alert everyone whose data was accessed by Cambridge Analytica.

He also wishes the company hadn’t waited so long to tell people what happened: “That’s definitely something that, looking back on this, I regret that we didn’t do at the time.”

“I think we got that wrong.”

Zuckerberg admitted this is that latest in a number of mistakes he’s made as Facebook has grown.

“I started this when I was so young and inexperienced,” said Zuckerberg.

“I made technical errors and business errors. I hired the wrong people. I trusted the wrong people,”

“I’ve probably launched more products that have failed than most people will in their lifetime.”

To address current and past problems, Mr Zuckerberg said his company would:

• investigate all Facebook apps that had access to large amounts of information before the platform was changed “to dramatically reduce data access” in 2014
• conduct a “full forensic audit” of any app with suspicious activity
• ban any developer that did not agree to a thorough audit
• ban developers that had misused personally identifiable information, and “tell everyone affected by those apps”

In future, he said Facebook would:

• restrict developers’ data access “even further” to prevent other kinds of abuse
• remove developers’ access to a user’s data if the user hadn’t activated the developer’s app for three months
• reduce the data that users give an app when they sign in to just name, profile photo, and email address
• require developers to obtain approval and also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data

Questions Remain

While Facebook is clearly in full damager limitation mode, it seems unlikely these public admissions will stop the calls for Zuckerberg to appear in front of the growing number of enquiries and investigations around the world.

In a letter to Zuckerberg, Damian Collins MP, the chair of the House of Commons committee investigating ‘fake news’ accused Facebook of giving answers “misleading to the Committee” at a previous hearing, investigating whether information had been taken without users’ consent.

Mr Collins said it was “now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process.

“Given your commitment at the start of the New Year to “fixing” Facebook, I hope that this representative will be you.”

The MP has requested a response to the letter by 26 March.

While the Cambridge Analytica scandal may be the issue which is currently generating the most headlines, it is merely the latest problem in a growing list that Facebook is facing.

The company has publicly announced a wide range of changes which it claims will solve many of the problems, but these are all retroactive. For many politicians – and users – the company’s attitude to data privacy and security remains deeply suspect.

GDPR Ahoy

As GDPR comes into force in May this year, the ‘light touch’ approach which the Information Commissioner has previously talked about, may not apply to the social media giant.

Like it or not, Facebook will have to accept that unless it puts its house in order, very quickly, a $50 billion drop in share price may be the tip of the iceberg.