Mark Zuckerberg apologized—but you had to wait for it.
Hours after posting a mea culpa on his Facebook page that Facebook users complained fell far short, the beleaguered Facebook CEO took to traditional media to say the words he couldn't bring himself to say earlier in the day: "I'm sorry."
In his first public address of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Facebook CEO also didn't say a lot of other things that Facebook users wanted to hear about the pilfering of sensitive information from tens of millions of them.
For example, Zuckerberg didn't explain why Facebook tried to stop publication of news articles informing the public of the breach.
He also did not say why Facebook didn't notify its users about the breach when it learned of it in 2015.
And he stopped short of apologizing to users. Instead, he framed Facebook as the victim of the breach by "bad actors," not the company whose policies allowed it to happen in the first place.
Zuckerberg did concede that Facebook had breached the trust of its 2 billion users. And he promised to fix it.
"We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you," he said.
In interviews with CNN and tech news outlet Recode that aired later in the day, Zuckerberg said the words everyone wanted to hear.
"We let the community down and I feel really bad and I'm sorry about that," he told Recode.
Mike Chapple, associate teaching professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations in the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, says Zuckerberg omitted some critical information.
"Facebook did not make any commitment to be transparent about what has already occurred," Chapple said in an email. "If Facebook truly wants to repair this breach of trust, they can begin with full disclosure about their past information sharing practices."
By and large, users were unimpressed and underwhelmed, having become painfully aware in recent days that Facebook allowed third parties to access massive amounts of their personal information, didn't adequately monitor how those parties were using the data and then were slow to address abuses they did find.
Danasia Fantastic, who runs a lifestyle website for millennial women TheUrbanRealist.com, says she's tempted to delete her Facebook account over the data leak and Facebook's handling of it.
"Someone needs to serve time over this or at least be fined," Fantastic said. "If there's a class action suit filed, I'm signing up."
The comments on Zuckerberg's Facebook post, which exceeded 13,000, showed the same level of frustration.
"As a long-time user of your platform I'm simply concerned that this is too little, too late," one user wrote. "The data collected from your users never should have happened in the first place. Your company—and industry—clearly cannot police itself," wrote another.
Someone fumed: "So basically you knew this s—- was going on years ago and NOW since you've been caught with your pants down, this is your response? Pathetic. I really do hope Congress makes you testify."
"This response falls far short Mark. You're still not being honest with the American people. There is no way you didn't know they had our data," called out another.
Zuckerberg told the New York Times on Wednesday that he's taking the #DeleteFacebook hashtag seriously.
"I don't think we've seen a meaningful number of people act on that, but, you know, it's not good," he said. "I think it's a clear signal that this is a major trust issue for people, and I understand that. And whether people delete their app over it or just don't feel good about using Facebook, that's a big issue that I think we have a responsibility to rectify."
Zuckerberg's remarks were his first since bombshell reports from the New York Times and the Guardian's The Observer alleged British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained and retained the personal information of 50 million Facebook users without their permission—30 million of them with enough details to match users to other records and build profiles of them. Cambridge Analytica has ties to President Trump's 2016 campaign.
Facebook's two top executives—Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg—were criticized for remaining silent for days after the news broke.
Explore further: UK lawmaker: Facebook misled Parliament over data leak risk
