Mark Zuckerberg will appear before Congress to address Cambridge Analytica scandal

Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to a CNN report. The committee is seeking more information concerning Facebook’s dealings with the data-analysis firm Cambridge Analytica, which was suspended from the platform for inappropriate data collection earlier this month. Zuckerberg apologized for Facebook’s handling of the issue in a CNN interview last week, calling it “a major breach of trust.” Zuckerberg declined to appear before a UK parliamentary committee undertaking a similar investigation.

Facebook is facing mounting pressure over Cambridge Analytica’s behavior, spurred by public accusations from former research director Christopher Wylie. The new allegations center on a Facebook app called “thisisyourdigitallife,” which was used to harvest personal data from as many as 50 million users through the Facebook API in 2015. The resulting data was then used to target ads for Cambridge Analytica clients, including Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Similar data-collection tricks are common among digital marketers, but Facebook’s limited reaction to the apparent privacy violation has spurred outrage from users and renewed interest from regulators in the US and Europe. Yesterday, the FTC confirmed an open investigation into whether Cambridge Analytica’s data collection violated an earlier consent decree by Facebook.



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