The leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are urging Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before lawmakers following revelations a data firm misused personal information harvested from 50 million Facebook profiles.
“The latest revelations regarding Facebook’s use and security of user data raises many serious consumer protection concerns,” committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said Thursday. “After committee staff received a briefing yesterday from Facebook officials, we felt that many questions were left unanswered.”
Zuckerberg told CNN Wednesday he is “happy” to testify before Congress “if it’s the right thing to do.”
“We believe, as CEO of Facebook, he is the right witness to provide answers to the American people,” Walden and Pallone said.
The Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to send a formal letter to Zuckerberg in the coming days.
Facebook has been criticized for failing to protect users’ information after it was discovered Cambridge Analytica, a British data firm that worked for the Trump campaign, improperly harvested personal data from millions of Facebook profiles and used it to influence voters ahead of the 2016 election.
Zuckerberg acknowledged in a lengthy Facebook post Wednesday the company made a mistake and vowed to take steps to protect users’ data.
The revelations have prompted additional scrutiny from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who raised questions last year about how Facebook and other social media platforms were used as part of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Facebook, Twitter, and Google sent top executives to Washington, D.C., last year to field questions from lawmakers, but none of their CEOs appeared.
Several lawmakers are now calling for the leaders of tech companies to testify before Congress.
