Sheryl Sandberg apologizes for Facebook data scandal

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg admits the company did not strengthen its security fast enough to safeguard the data of up to 87 million users affected by its privacy scandal. Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, is now apologizing for that failure. She said yesterday, quote, we were way too idealistic. Anna Warner is here now with what Facebook promises to do to regain the trust of more than 2 billion users. Anna, good morning. Seems like a big job. Yeah. Good morning, Gayle. Sheryl Sandberg says that Facebook plans to double the security operations department from 10,000 employees to 20,000 by the end of the year. On Monday, Facebook also intends to notify the millions of users who may have been impacted by the Cambridge Analytica leak. We know that we did not do a good enough job protecting people's data, and I'm really sorry for that, and Mark's really sorry for that. In an interview with Bloomberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg focused on the company's future after the massive data breach. What people want to know from us is are we going to take steps to be more protective and more proactive, and the answer to that is a firm yes. On Monday, Facebook says it will make it clearer for users to see which apps they're connected to and how to delete them. Founder Mark Zuckerberg says in 2013, an app called This Is Your Digital Life began harvesting data of the roughly 300,000 Facebook users who downloaded the app and their friends. The collected data, he says, was eventually shared with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, violating Facebook's privacy terms. Cambridge Analytica has denied wrongdoing. This week, Facebook said data from as many as 87 million users may have been scraped. I'm not going to sit here and say we won't find more problems. We will. And this is a forever thing because security is an arms race. Sandberg also pushed back against ex-Facebook employees who've criticized the company's practices, saying it's obviously disappointing when people who worked here speak out. We have an incredibly open culture internally. Last year, former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya said he felt tremendous guilt building the social media giant. It literally is a point now where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. Sandberg says that a few of Facebook's advertisers have paused their spending following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify before Congress about the data leak beginning on Tuesday. I'm guessing some people have some questions for him. Yeah, and it sounds like Sandberg didn't answer them. All right. Hopefully they'll hear more next week. Thank you, Anna.