Facebook CEO Zuckerberg to testify before Congress

Mike Snider | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Zuckerberg admits 'mistakes' in privacy scandal Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a message Wednesday admitting mistakes in a privacy scandal involving a data mining firm with Trump connections. He says Facebook is taking steps to better protect user data. (March 21)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg next week will make his first appearances before Congress to answer questions about the recent data misuse affecting tens of millions of Facebook users.

Zuckerberg will be the sole witness Tuesday at a joint hearing of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees on the same subject. "Our joint hearing will be a public conversation with the CEO of this powerful and influential company about his vision for addressing problems that have generated significant concern about Facebook’s role in our democracy, bad actors using the platform, and user privacy," Sen. John Thune, who chairs the committee, said in a statement late Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Zuckerberg will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to testify at a hearing on data privacy, in particular the revelation that tens of millions of Facebook profiles, collected by a personality app, were then sold to Cambridge Analytica, a company that used the profiles to create election ad-targeting tools for Trump's campaign.

More: Facebook now thinks 87 million had data shared with Cambridge Analytica

The announcement of Zuckerberg's scheduling comes a day after Facebook said it had removed more accounts and pages on its social network — and on Instagram — that it found linked to a Russian troll farm.

That organization, the Internet Research Agency, based in Olgino, a part of St. Petersburg, Russia, controlled 70 Facebook accounts, 138 Facebook pages and 65 Instagram accounts Facebook recently removed from those social media networks, the company said Tuesday. Facebook owns Instagram.

Scrutiny has intensified on Facebook and its CEO in the wake of recent events. After the 2016 elections, Facebook was slow to acknowledge that shadowy entities had used the platform to manipulate voters. It's repeatedly increased its estimates on how broad those influence campaigns were.

Leaders of the House Commerce committee last month asked Zuckerberg to testify before the panel about the misuse of 50 million Facebook profiles, collected by a personality app and then sold, in violation of the social network's terms of service, to Cambridge Analytica, a company that used the profiles to create election ad-targeting tools for Trump's campaign.



“This hearing will be an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online," said committee chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Frank Pallone, (D-N.J.), the top ranking Democrat on the committee.

Republican leaders of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee also sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking for information about the possible privacy breach. Facebook officials have met with U.S. lawmakers amid the crisis.



"This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time," Zuckerberg said in signed full-page advertisements published March 25 in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and six British papers. "We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can't, we don't deserve it."

The Federal Trade Commission said it was investigating the situation as a possible violation of a 2011 consent decree between the agency and Facebook that the company maintain stringent privacy restrictions on user data. That announcement came after Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked the FTC to look into the matter.

Lawmakers in Europe and the U.K. have also sought an audience with the Facebook executive. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May supported Information Commissioner Damian Collins' request for officials from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to testify before the digital, culture, media and sport committee.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before E&C on April 11th >> https://t.co/QA0PTPV9bB pic.twitter.com/K4LZSNlhka — Energy and Commerce (@HouseCommerce) April 4, 2018

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Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter @MikeSnider.