Facebook admits trust has been damaged but promises change

Facebook spent much of 2018 apologising.

In March, the company was forced to reveal a massive leak of 87 million users information to Cambridge Analytica - one of a series of data abuses.

Later in the year, a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee showed that between 2015 and 2017 30 million users shared state-sponsored Facebook and Instagram posts with their family and friends.

The company has pledged to clean-up its platform and to do more to protect the privacy of its two billion users.

Around the world, governments wait in the wings, threatening to impose restrictions on a company which, thus far, has failed to demonstrate it can regulate itself.

Meanwhile the performance of the business has spluttered. The number of people in Europe using Facebook has declined slightly, and OFCOM data suggests its popularity has fallen in the UK, among adults in particular.

In an interview with ITV News, Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s Vice President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, admitted 2018 was a “hard year” for the company and that there had been “an erosion of trust”.

But she insisted that change was underway.