Facebook Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg will testify before U.S House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11, according to reports.
The committee had asked Zuckerberg to testify how the information of 50 million Facebook users was collected by Cambridge Analytica during 2016’s U.S Presidential election in violation of social network’s privacy policy.
The political advertising firm, which worked with President Donald Trump’s campaign, had obtained the user information through a survey app and used it to create election ad-targeting tools.
“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 Greg Walden, R-OR, and Frank Pallone Jr, D-NJ, in the press release.
Several class action lawsuits have been filed against Facebook, Zuckerberg, and other top officials of both companies in different U.S courts after reports of data misuse emerged last month.
Republican leaders of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee had also written a letter to Zuckerberg seeking an explanation of possible data misuse.
Zuckerberg will testify how the information of 50 million Facebook users was collected by Cambridge Analytica during 2016’s U.S Presidential election in violation of social network’s privacy policy
Last month, Facebook CEO had confirmed that he is willing to testify before Congress, but a date for that wasn’t set.
“We appreciate Mr Zuckerberg’s willingness to testify before the committee, and we look forward to him answering our questions on April 11” the press release added.
Facebook has made a number of changes in its privacy policy in the wake of the scandal.
On Tuesday, the company launched a new tool which allows the users to remove third-party apps and the posts published by those apps on their behalf in bulk.
Previously, the users had to access and remove their data on an app-by-app basis which was a cumbersome and time-consuming process.
The social network has also said that it will automatically remove the apps that haven’t been accessed by the users from three months.
The company’s app review process has been temporarily paused to implement new changes.
”We know these changes are not easy, but we believe these updates will help mitigate any breach of trust with the broader developer ecosystem. Facebook would like to thank you and the entire global developer community for working with us to create a better experience for people. We will continue to post updates as we have them over the next few weeks,” Ime Archibong, Vice President of partnerships at Facebook, wrote on company’s Developer News section last week.
Facebook has also delayed its plan to reveal its home speaker at its major developer’s conference on May 1 due to public outrage over data misuse.
