While the company admitted to the publication that it had concerns about CA's practices months before its data gathering became public knowledge, it insisted that it "absolutely did not mislead anyone." A spokesperson said the employees were talking about a different issue in the email exchange, and that it wasn't about CA's data purchase from Aleksandr Kogan. If you'll recall, the Cambridge University professor sold CA up to 87 million users' information gathered through his personality quiz app. Data extraction didn't go against Facebook's policies in the past, and the social network maintains that it was Kogan's sale specifically that was against its TOS.

He said:

"In September 2015 employees heard speculation that Cambridge Analytica was scraping data, something that is unfortunately common for any internet service. In December 2015, we first learned through media reports that Kogan sold data to Cambridge Analytica, and we took action. Those were two different things."

A few days ago, The Guardian also reported that Facebook execs met CA whistleblower Christopher Wylie back in the summer of 2016, way before the scandal became public. Unlike this incident, however, Facebook denied that one and called it "flatly and totally untrue."