Facebook CEO To Testify Before Congress This Week
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WASHINGTON (CBSMiami) - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on Capitol Hill, warming up for two days of testimony about how user information got into the hands of a British consulting firm.
Mark Zuckerberg began his Capitol Hill visit Monday morning behind closed door with Senator Bill Nelson. The Florida Democrat was among lawmakers calling for an in-person appearance.
The company has faced a fierce backlash since news broke last month that Cambridge Analytica, a London-based data analytics group that worked for the 2016 Trump campaign, was able to obtain information about tens of millions of users.
Zuckerberg is scheduled to go before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees on Tuesday, and then the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday to explain how the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica got hold of the information.
Republican Senator John Kennedy will have a chance to question Zuckerberg at the Senate Judiciary hearing.
"My biggest worry with all this is that the privacy issue and what I call the propagandist issue are both too big for Facebook to fix," said Kennedy.
In preparation for this week's hearings, Zuckerberg announced new privacy measures and Facebook is now communicating directly to its users
Starting this week, the company is notifying 87 million account holders whose data might have been accessed.
After the scandal broke, tech giant Mozilla pulled its advertising off Facebook.
"Trust, right now, isn't being earned. I mean, technology companies aren't treating people like people. They're not treating people like human beings," said Mozilla CEO Jascha Kaykas-Wolff.
A wave of Facebook users has abandoned the site in protest. Zuckerberg is hoping his testimony will help the company win back their trust.
