Following the congressional testimony given today by Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, NAACP remains concerned about the data breaches and numerous privacy mishaps that the tech giant has encountered in recent years, and is especially critical about those which occurred during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
“The breach and misuse of data of 87 million users was negligent at best and exploitative at worst,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of NAACP. “Sixty-seven percent of African-Americans who use the internet are on Facebook, and a significant amount of them may have been affected by the breach. Privacy, whether offline or online, is an unquestionable civil right, and Facebook has a duty to protect its users from any malicious attacks, and inform them on any failures in protecting them from such attacks. On both accounts Facebook has failed its users, particularly the people of color who were adversely affected by the propaganda promoted during the 2016 presidential election.
