Facebook is desperately trying to mend its damaged reputation following the continued fallout of a massive data scandal .
Alongside London-based elections consultancy Cambridge Analytica, the social media giant is at the center of an ongoing dispute over the alleged harvesting and use of personal data. The allegations have heightened concerns over whether such data was then used to try and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote.
Ahead of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearance on Capitol Hill on Tuesday , CNBC takes a look at exactly how the tech behemoth ended up in the midst of a media firestorm.
April 21, 2010 — Facebook launches Open Graph
Less than five weeks after Facebook launched Open Graph API version 1.0 for developers, Zuckerberg wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he vowed to resolve users' concerns about how their personal information was being managed.
He said: "We have also heard that some people don't understand how their personal information is used and worry that it is shared in ways they don't want. I'd like to clear that up now."
2013 — 'Thisisyourdigitallife'
2014 — Rule changes
December 11, 2015 — Ted Cruz
In late 2015, The Guardian reported that Cambridge Analytica was helping Ted Cruz 's presidential campaign. The report suggested the Republican candidate was using psychological data based on research spanning tens of millions of Facebook users in an attempt to gain an advantage over his political rivals — including Donald Trump .
In response to the story, Facebook said that when it learned about the data leaks, it sought to ban Kogan's app and legally pressured both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica to remove all of the data they had improperly acquired. The social media giant claims both Kogan and the London-based elections consultancy firm certified that the data had been deleted.
2016 — Donald Trump
March 17, 2018 — Expose
In an explosive expose published in mid-March, The Guardian and The New York Times initially reported that 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested for Cambridge Analytica in a major data scandal. This number was later revised to as many as 87 million Facebook profiles.
The articles sought to outline how the data of millions of Facebook users ended up being given to Cambridge Analytica.
Christopher Wylie, a co-founder of the political data analytics firm, revealed the alleged practices to both newspapers. Wylie claimed the data sold to Cambridge Analytica was then used to develop "psychographic" profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online.
Cambridge Analytica has since denied any of Kogan's data was used in connection to the Trump campaign.
March 20, 2018 — FTC launch inquiry
Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers urged Zuckerberg to testify before Congress.
March 21, 2018 — Zuckerberg breaks his silence
In a Facebook post published several days after the initial reports, Zuckerberg eventually responded to the continued fallout over the data scandal.
He said: "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again."
Zuckerberg also announced the social media giant would no longer allow app developers to access its users' data after three months of inactivity and it would reduce the amount of information people are required to hand over to third parties. Facebook would also look to audit all apps with access to large amounts of data before 2014, he added.
