Zuckerberg meets with lawmakers ahead of congressional testimony into Cambridge Analytica scandal

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Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is set to be grilled by members of U.S. Congress this week in a watershed moment for the technology industry as the social media giant scrambles to convince regulators and critics that it is doing enough to protect its platform from abuse.

Mr. Zuckerberg swapped his trademark hoodie and jeans for a suit and tie during private meetings with lawmakers on Monday. His appearance on Capitol Hill comes ahead of two days of congressional testimony into revelations that as many as 87 million Facebook users – more than 600,000 of them in Canada – had their personal information improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, a Britain-based political consultancy hired by U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

The 33-year-old tech billionaire will appear before back-to-back panels of the Senate judiciary and commerce committees on Tuesday and will also testify in front of the House committee on energy and commerce on Wednesday.

The testimony is Mr. Zuckerberg’s first public appearance in front of lawmakers and is considered by many to be the most important test of his career since a 2012 initial public offering helped catapult Facebook into one of the world’s more valuable and powerful companies.

Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who sits on both Senate committees, compared the scrutiny of Facebook’s data-collection practices by Congress to the landmark 1960s exposé of the U.S. automobile industry that prompted lawmakers to introduce far-reaching safety regulations. “The company really is at a moment of reckoning,” he told NPR.

During his testimony, Mr. Zuckerberg will apologize for being slow to recognize and react to political and privacy threats on Facebook and lay out steps that Facebook is taking to prevent future misuse of personal information from the platform’s more than two billion users.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” he said in prepared remarks released by the House energy and commerce committee on Monday. “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

Facebook has rolled out a series of changes on its platform in recent weeks aimed at bolstering data privacy and advertising transparency.

On Monday, it began notifying its users whether it believes their personal information was shared with Cambridge Analytica.

The Menlo Park, Calif., firm also unveiled a proposal to support academics who are researching the role that social media plays in democratic elections, including an independent peer-review process to oversee how scholars access “privacy-protected” data about Facebook users. The move comes amid revelations that University of Cambridge researcher Aleksandr Kogan built a personality profile quiz to collect data from millions of Facebook users for academic purposes and later shared the information with the political consulting firm.

Facebook suspended B.C.-based technology firm AggregateIQ, which has been linked to the Facebook privacy controversy by Canadian whistle-blower Christopher Wylie. This week, Facebook suspended a market research firm called CubeYou that was collecting personal information through quizzes on Facebook it said were intended for academic research and later sharing that data with advertisers. Facebook said it was still auditing CubeYou, which is based in Redwood City, Calif., but believed it could suspend as many as 50 apps from the company.

The Silicon Valley firm also deleted a feature that allowed people to search for users’ profiles based on their e-mail addresses and phone numbers, which Mr. Zuckerberg said had been abused by “malicious actors” to collect information about many Facebook users.

Despite the changes, Mr. Zuckerberg is still expected to face a grilling from members of Congress about his company’s privacy policies, foreign political interference and Facebook’s extraordinarily profitable ad-based business model, which involves collecting and analyzing personal information on users to help advertisers better target their audience.

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat on the energy and commerce committee, wrote in an op-ed that she expected Mr. Zuckerberg to provide a “detailed accounting” of how personal information was ultimately shared with Cambridge Analytica.

“If you don’t control your platform, we’re going to have to do something about it,” California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told a gathering of Silicon Valley executives last week.

Some Republican lawmakers are pressing Facebook to support the Honest Ads Act, a bi-partisan bill to bring greater transparency to online political ads, along with more sweeping regulations. “We need a set of privacy rules for the entire internet ecosystem,” Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican representative running for Senate, wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s public remarks will be closely watched by investors. Facebook’s share price has dropped nearly 15 per cent since news of Cambridge Analytica came to light in mid-March.

The controversy represents “the darkest chapter in Facebook’s 14-year history,” GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a research note. GBH said it had conducted surveys that estimated nearly 15 per cent of Facebook users had curtailed their activity on the platform in recent weeks because of the data privacy concerns.

Digital privacy and consumer protection advocates urged Mr. Zuckerberg to use his congressional appearance to affirm that Facebook plans to adopt General Data Protection Regulation – a series of comprehensive new privacy rules set to take effect across the European Union next month – across its platform worldwide. “There is simply no reason for your company to provide less than the best legal standards currently available to protect the privacy of Facebook users,” several U.S. and European groups wrote in an open letter to Facebook.