Later today, Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify in front of Congress on the issues of Cambridge Analytica and Russian meddling. The testimony includes an introduction, discussion on each of the previously mentioned issues, and a conclusion. Each issue will be discussed by Zuckerberg and contain two sections each, ‘what happened’, and ‘what we’re doing about it’. Following the testimony, Zuckerberg will be grilled by the senators.
The first hearing is scheduled for 14:15 Eastern Time or 18:15 UTC + 0 and will be streamed on the Committee on the Judiciary hearings website. On Wednesday, Zuckerberg will go in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That hearing will take place at 10:00 ET or 14:00 UTC + 0, and will be live streamed on YouTube and the Energy and Commerce website.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota said in a statement:
“Our joint hearing will be a public conversation with the CEO of this powerful and influential company about his vision for addressing problems that have generated significant concern about Facebook’s role in our democracy, bad actors using the platform, and user privacy.”
While it’ll be interesting to see whether anything new comes from the hearing, Facebook is already quite vocal via its Newsroom about what measures it is taking to tackle issues the confront it. Just yesterday, the firm announced that it was going to give scholars access to data in order to see if social media did impact elections and by how much, and it has also used the outlet to set people straight on issues such as call and SMS data that it collects.
Source: Committee on the Judiciary and Energy and Commerce Committee via Wired
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