Mark Zuckerberg breaks silence on Cambridge Analytica scandal, announces 3 big changes to Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finally responded to the scandal involving data firm Cambridge Analytica, which has been accused of harvesting 50 million Facebook profiles without user consent.

Zuck's answer to the issue: an audit of every app and service that has access to Facebook's huge swath of personal data.

Facebook also will show every user a new tool, conveniently placed at the top of their News Feed, that shows what apps they've granted access to. That was previously available but difficult to find.

Facebook will further limit the access developers have had to its wealth of data.

"We will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months," Zuckerberg's post reads.

That means taking more of a walled garden approach, something that has been a major criticism but seemingly now necessary after this data scandal.

The policy changes come in the wake of reports about Cambridge Analytica, a data firm tied to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, having access to 50 million Facebook users' personal data, and following cries from users to #deletefacebook.

Reports in The New York Times and The Guardian, informed by whistleblower Christopher Wylie, revealed that the data was obtained without users' knowledge and was then used to create psychographic profiles. It's unclear how much influence the data actually had, but the fact that it happened prompted Facebook to suspend the company from access to its services on Friday.

Despite the scale of the scandal, Zuckerberg did not speak publicly until now. He also did not attend a company all-hands about the topic on Tuesday. But he is expected to speak to his employees on Friday, according to The Verge.

There is, however, one major point missing from his wordy statement: an apology.

You can read this full statement here:

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also shared a post on Facebook at the same time as Zuckerberg.

Sandberg's included something much closer to an apology with the line, "I deeply regret that we didn't do enough to deal with it," in her official statement on the matter. "We have a responsibility to protect your data -- and if we can't, then we don't deserve to serve you," she wrote.

You can read her full post here:

We'll hear more from Zuckerberg at 9 p.m. ET on CNN. He'll be interviewed by Laurie Segall during Anderson Cooper 360.