On the same day Facebook bought ads in U.S. and British newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media site faced new questions about collecting phone numbers and text messages from Android devices.

The website Ars Technica reported that users who checked data gathered by Facebook on them found that it had years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and text messages.

"Drones have become my passion," says Noursely Doumbia, who holds a degree in electronics and is currently learning to pilot drones as part of a pioneering program in Ivory Coast's economic capital Abidjan.

The use of Facebook data to target voters has triggered global outrage with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But the concept is nothing new: Barack Obama made extensive use of the social network in 2008 and stepped up "micro-targeting" in his 2012 re-election effort.

Tumblr announced Friday the blogging platform was used by a shadowy Russian internet group to spread disinformation during the 2016 election campaign as it published the 84 account handles linked to the effort.

Mark Zuckerberg rose to wealth and fame with a mission of connecting everyone through Facebook, but now faces the wrath of users outraged he isn't doing more to defend their data.

Internet giants Facebook and Google on Thursday testified before a parliamentary committee in Singapore as they warned the city-state against introducing new laws to combat "fake news", saying that existing legislation is adequate to address the problem.

Britain's culture minister said Thursday that Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg's plan to fix problems at the world's biggest social media network did not go far enough.

YouTube has tightened its restrictions on firearms videos.

The video-serving network owned by Google is banning videos that provide instructions on how to make a firearm, ammunition, high-capacity magazines, and accessories such as bump stocks and silencers.

In the wake of a privacy scandal involving a Trump-connected data-mining firm, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg embarked on a rare media mini-blitz in an attempt to take some of the public and political pressure off the social network.

But it's far from clear whether he's won over U.S. and European authorities, much less the broader public whose status updates provide Facebook with an endless stream of data it uses to sell targeted ads.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, breaking his silence over the data scandal roiling the social network, acknowledged Wednesday that the company had made "mistakes" and needed to "step up" to fix the problem.

"We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you," Zuckerberg said in his first public comments since the scandal broke last weekend.