Zuckerberg "Willing" To Appear Before Congress

UPDATE March 22, 2018: Following a statement posted on his Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg did a series of interviews on Wednesday with CNN, the New York Times, and Recode about the Cambridge Analytica data mining scandal.

Zuckerberg says that "if he's the right person" he will definitely testify in front of Congress about the exposure of tens of millions of users' data to the UK data-analysis firm without their consent. He also offered that perhaps Facebook should be regulated, though he did not specifiy what types of regulation he envisions

Countable's original story appears below.

What’s the story?

On Saturday the New York Times broke the story of how British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica managed to mine the personal Facebook data of 50 million users, most without their consent. That information was used to target advertising by the Trump campaign. In the wake of the report, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is calling for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about what the company knew.

The data mining was done via a personality quiz and app Cambridge Analytica paid approximately 270,000 people nominal amounts to install. It allow the company to mine those user's Facebook information and activity. It also moved onto their friends and associates. Though the data mining app was allowed at the time under Facebook policy, the company researcher's plans to use the data were not.

All told, 50 million Facebook profiles were mined by Cambridge Analytica in pursuit of creative psychographic profiles to use in developing targeted advertising an other election efforts.

Cambridge Analytica jumped into the American political process during the 2014 midterm elections. The Hill reports that they were in talks with former Trump campaign staffer Corey Lewandowski in 2015.

In 2016 then-Trump campaign digital manager, and current Trump 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, contracted with the company. Cambridge Analytica designed target audiences for advertising and fundraising appeals, predicted voter turnout, and planned candidate Trump’s travel schedule.

In 2015 Facebook learned of the data leak but took no steps to notify users of the leak and only directed Cambridge Analytica to destroy the data. The company took no steps to retrieve or secure the data.

According to the Times, concerns about Facebook’s part in the leak of user’s data have raised concerns with various lawmakers. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has called for Zuckerberg himself to appear in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, have called for investigations of the company.

Cambridge Analytica is also being called to task by the British Parliament, which is seeking to see if the company was instrumental in guiding the Brexit vote by using data mined from European Facebook users without their consent.

What do you think?

Should Congress call Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify personally in his company’s role in the data leak? Should Cambridge Analytica be barred from working for campaigns in the United States, or not? Should they have to surrender all the harvested data? Does this change your sense of the security of the Facebook platform or how you will interact with the internet going into the next election cycle?

Tell us in the comments what you think, then use the Take Action button to tell your reps!

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— Asha Sanaker

(Photo Credit: Mauricio Pesce via Wikipedia / Creative Commons)