Chan Zuckerberg Philanthropy Doesn't Share Data With Facebook

(Bloomberg) -- The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic investment group run by Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t give any data back to Facebook Inc., Chan said Thursday.

“Our organizations are completely separate,” Chan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There’s no sharing of data.”

The group has come under fire for its association with Facebook, which Zuckerberg co-founded, given the social network’s spate of scandals over privacy and election manipulation. Nurses and politicians have petitioned to take the Zuckerberg name off a local hospital in San Francisco, while students who use some CZI-backed learning tools have protested -- in part because they are concerned that their private data could be shared with Facebook.

“What’s happened at Facebook, Mark is working incredibly diligently on, and we have the opportunity to make sure that we internalize those lessons,” Chan said. She appeared on television to tout a new investment to help solve the San Francisco Bay Area’s homeless problems.

--With assistance from Emily Chang.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Frier in San Francisco at sfrier1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.