A new chairman should step in place of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, in an attempt to repair its reputation regarding data privacy, according to a major US pension fund official.
New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, whose oversees funds that include $1bn (£710m) invested in Facebook, said the leaking of 50 million personal records to Cambridge Analytica meant the board had to change to rebuild public faith.
Speaking to CNBC, Stringer said Facebook was in “uncharted waters” and had so far failed to convince its two billion users about its data security.
Stringer called for Zuckerberg to be replaced, along with the addition of three new independent directors that are experts in data security and ethics. He will continue to make calls for change until they are actioned, Stringer added.
Without change, the threat of a wave of regulation and an adverse impact on the brand and its finances would follow.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has called for stronger regulation of how companies use customer data. “I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation,” he said to Recode and MSNBC. “However, I think we’re beyond that here”.
Facebook’s lead director, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, has previously stated that Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg were working with the rest of the business to build “stronger protections”.
Zuckerberg had sent out an update stating: “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. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago.
“But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”