Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress

You will rightfully have hard questions for me to answer. Before I talk about the steps we taking to address them, I want to talk about how we got here. Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all of the good that connecting people can do. And as Facebook has grown, feel -- people have gotten is powerful new tool for staying connected to people they love and recently we’ve seen the #metoo movement and after hurricane Harvey, people came to the and 70 million small businesses used Facebook to create jobs and grow. But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools for being used as harm as well. That goes for fake news, for interference in elections and we didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a big mistake and it was my mistake and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it and I’m responsible for what happens here. So now we have to go through our -- all of our relationship with people and make sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility. It’s not enough to just connect people. We have to make sure those connections are positive. It’s not enough to give people a voice. We have to make sure people aren’t using it to harm people or spread disinformation. Across the board we have a responsibility to not just build tools but to make sure that they’re used for good. It will take some time to work through all the changes but I’m committed to getting this right. Here are a few things that we are doing to address this and to prevent it from happening again. First, we’re getting to the bottom of exactly what Cambridge Analytica did and telling everyone affected. What we know now is that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed information by buying it. When we first contacted Cambridge Analytica, they told us they had deleted the data. About a month ago, we heard new reports that suggested that wasn’t true. Now we’re working with governments in the U.S., the U.K. And around the world to do a full audit of what they’ve done and make sure they get rid of any data they may still have. Second, to make sure no other app developers out there are misusing data, we’re investigating every app and to prevent this from going forward, we’re making sure they can’t access as much information now. The good news is we already made big changes in our platform in 2014 that would have prevented this specific situation with Cambridge Analytica from occurring again today. But there’s more to do. You can find more details on the steps we’re taking in my written statement. My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together. Advisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as I am running Facebook. I started Facebook when I was in college. We’ve come a long way since then. We now serve more than 2 billion people around the world, and every day people use our services to stay connected to the people that matter to them most. I believe deeply in what we are doing and I know that when we address these challenges, we’ll look back and view helping people connect and giving more people a voice as a positive force in the world. I realize the issues we’re talking about today aren’t just issues for Facebook in our community, they’re issues and challenges for all of us as Americans. Thank you for having me here today. I’m ready to take your questions.