Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets with a group of entrepreneurs and innovators during a round-table discussion at Cortex Innovation Community technology hub in St. Louis, November 9, 2017. (Jeff Roberson/AFP)
WASHINGTON — The leaders of a House oversight committee say Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the panel on April 11.
In an announcement Wednesday, Reps. Greg Walden and Frank Pallone say the hearing will focus on Facebook’s “use and protection of user data.” Facebook is facing scrutiny over its data collection following allegations that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users to try to influence elections.
Walden, R-Ore. is the House Energy and Commerce committee’s chairman. Pallone of New Jersey is the panel’s top Democrat. In a statement, they say the 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.”
Last month, Zuckerberg turned down a request by British lawmakers to appear before them to respond to concerns about data privacy, offering to send chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer or chief product officer Chris Cox to London instead.
The EU has given the social media giant until April 10 to answer its own queries over the scandal, which has heavily hit Facebook’s share price and raised major questions over how social media companies use private data.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Editionby email and never miss our top stories
Cambridge Analytica been under fire since The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that it used data inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to influence elections, including the 2016 US presidential election. Among that information were users’ likes and friend connections on the network.
A man reads a full-page advertisment, taken out by Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman and chief executive officer of Facebook to apologize for the large-scale leak of personal data from the social network, on the backpage of a newspaper, in Ripon, England, March 25, 2018. (Oli SCARFF/AFP)
We can't do this work alone.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this,please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
