The Facebook CEO says that the question with regulating tech isn't "if," but "how."

markzuck  (Facebook)

Days into the Cambridge Analytica scandal rocking Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence and went on a media blitz on Wednesday.The #DeleteFacebook movement was growing, and the company's stock was taking a hit.Zuckerberg apologized, said he is willing to testify before Congress, said he thinks big tech should be regulated, and explained how Facebook is making changes to protect user data.

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke his days-long silence on the Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked the social network and sent its stock diving.

Now, to follow up on his earlier statement, Zuckerberg has done a rare series of interviews with the press on the matter: A televised sit-down with CNN, along with printed interviews in Wired, The New York Times, and Recode.

Notably, in several of these interviews, he actually apologized, saying "sorry" — a word that he conspicuously hadn't used in his Facebook post earlier in the day.

The scandal centers on the British data company Cambridge Analytica, which has ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and which illicitly obtained information from as many as 50 million Facebook profiles by abusing Facebook's data-sharing features.

Mainly, in these interviews, Zuckerberg reiterated the points he made in his earlier statement: Facebook regrets what happened, and has already taken steps to ensure that what happened with Cambridge Analytica can never happen again.

Still, the devil is in the details, and in these interviews, Zuckerberg revealed a lot about how he, and Facebook, think about the situation. Here are some highlights:

Zuckerberg is happy to testify to Congress "if it's the right thing to do," he told CNN. He expounded on this to Wired — he says he's willing to testify personally, but would rather leave it to Facebook's legal and technical experts, who can speak with more authority on the situation.He told The New York Times that the#DeleteFacebook movement that's sprung up around the scandal hasn't seen "a meaningful number of people act on [it]," but it's still "not good." He continued: "I think it’s a clear signal thatthis is a major trust issue for people, and I understand that."Zuckerberg believes that tech should be regulated: "The question isn’t 'Should there be regulation or shouldn’t there be?' It’s 'How do you do it?'" he told Wired. He says that he supports regulating tech, but that he's wary of "micromanagement" of free speech by governments. (He expressed explicit support for the Honest Ads Act, a US bill that would require more transparency around advertising if passed.)Zuckerberg told Recode more about the audits it plans to perform on Facebook app-developers who could have abused user data as Cambridge Analytica did.Facebook will need to analyze tens of thousands of apps in a process that will cost "many millions of dollars," he says — plus, they need to hire qualified auditors.

All told, it's a rare look at how the CEO of the world's most successful social platform is looking at its power — and its responsibility.