A top Facebook official said Wednesday the company believes it can protect user data even while leveraging such information to sell lucrative ads that help businesses target narrowly defined markets.
“We use information that people share with us or share with third-party sites to make those ads relevant to them,” Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “When people share information with us, we do not give it to advertisers without their permission, we never sell data, and they have control over the information they use.”
Facebook and other technology firms have come under congressional scrutiny for the amount of data they share with third-party sites, sometimes without the direct consent of the user, after reports earlier this year that a consultant to President Trump’s 2016 campaign gained access to information on millions of Facebook users improperly.
[Also read: Facebook quietly rating user trustworthiness on 0-1 scale: Report]
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the panel’s top Democrat, previously questioned Facebook over its data practices, including whether federal regulators had knowledge of the partnerships with other companies and why some information was stored on third-party servers.
Leaders of the Senate’s intelligence panel, meanwhile, questioned how much of the data from Twitter and Facebook can be accessed by foreign adversaries to target users with disinformation campaigns.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s top Democrat, previously circulated a series of policy proposals that would place firms like Facebook under greater federal oversight. The white paper’s suggestions included requiring social media platforms to label so-called “bot accounts” or face penalties from the Federal Trade Commission.
Sandberg voiced support for more regulation, but stopped short of endorsing a specific proposal.
“People who use Facebook should understand what information is being used” and the controls they have, she said. “We don’t think it’s a question of whether regulation. We think its a question of the right regulation.”
