Facebook admits it wasn’t the ‘wisest move’ threatening to sue journalists before data breach scandal was exposed

A SENIOR Facebook boss regrets the company's decision to threaten journalists who exposed the data scandal with legal action.

The company's head of news said it wasn't their 'wisest move' to use lawyers to try to bury a report revealing how Facebook gave up data on 50 million users without their permission.

AP:Associated Press Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's social network lawyered up over the Cambridge Analytica scandal – but now admits that may have been a mistake

The Guardian report told how Facebook let an academic access personal info for millions of users around the world.

This data was reportedly sold on to Cambridge Analytica, a British political propaganda firm allegedly involved with the Trump and Brexit campaigns.

Carole Cadwalladr, the Guardian reporter who broke the story, revealed that Facebook threatened to sue the newspaper to stop the report being published.

But Facebook now reckons that was a big mistake.

Facebook Data Breach – what happened? Here's what you need to know... A personality quiz app obtained data for 270,000 willing Facebook users

But it also sucked up info on all of their Facebook friends

That meant the app caught data for around 50-60 million users

This data was reportedly sold on to UK research firm Cambridge Analytica

Cambridge Analytica helps politicians and lobby groups create propaganda

The data was supposedly used to boost the Brexit campaign and get Trump into the White House

Facebook is said to have known about the data breach since 2015

The social network asked companies with the data to delete it, but didn't enforce the rule

The Guardian revealed the incident in an exposé thanks to Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie

There are now serious questions about whether Facebook has broken laws by giving up this data

Campbell Brown, who heads up news partnerships at Facebook, said it was "not our wisest move" to threaten journalists.

He added: "If it were me, I would have probably not threatened to sue The Guardian."

It's a surprisingly frank tone, given that Facebook has tried to brush off blame over the fiasco at every turn.

After the story broke over the weekend, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg went into hiding for four days.

Then on Wednesday evening, he published a 900-word statement on the debacle – and didn't even apologise.

Confused by the Facebook breach? Check out our helpful guides...

Facebook seems to be pinning the blame on academic Alexandr Kogan, who allegedly sold the data on.

And they're also annoyed at Cambridge Analytica, because they asked the spin-doctor company to delete Facebook's data – and it turns out that may never have happened.

But there are serious questions over whether Facebook was right to give up such large amounts of user data in the first place.

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The Facebook quiz app that secured the data only had around 270,000 users – but it also obtained data from all of those user's Facebook friends, without permission.

Countries around the world are now investigating whether Facebook acted unlawfully by handing this data over.

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