Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has thus far avoided a personal congressional grilling, despite mounting questions about his company’s privacy standards and potential connections to the Russian election-meddling scandal.
That could be about to change as lawmakers on Monday pushed to question the social media multibillionaire directly about reports that Cambridge Analytica, a political research company, had surreptitiously obtained private data from more than 50 million Facebook to bolster its work with the Trump presidential campaign.
The news rocked the Silicon Valley-based firm’s shares, which experienced their biggest drop since September 2012, tumbling roughly 7 percent Monday.
The dip wiped about $40 billion off of Facebook’s market value and sent both the Dow Jones index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq markets sharply down for the day, amid fears that new legislation to protect personal data could cut into the firm’s booming advertising business.
For months, Facebook has fended off accusations it was stonewalling congressional investigations into its use during the 2016 vote. Some lawmakers charge Facebook’s executives did not do enough to stop Kremlin propagandists from exploiting the site in 2016.
Mr. Zuckerberg, 33, took roughly a year to publicly apologize for dismissing suggestions that Facebook, which boasts roughly 2 billion global users, had been “turned into a war zone” and manipulated by Russia to influence the 2016 presidential polls.
The latest wave of revelations had Republicans and Democrats joining forces Monday in their critique of the firm’s ability to protect personal data, petitioning Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, to summon Mr. Zuckerberg for a public hearing.
“The reports further indicate that Facebook knew about this breach more than two years ago and failed to acknowledge it and take swift and meaningful action,” Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, and John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, wrote to Mr. Grassley about Cambridge Analytica. “It’s clear these platforms can’t police themselves,” Ms. Klobuchar added in a tweet.
In Britain, Damian Collins, chair of the Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee, said Mr. Zuckerberg should “stop hiding behind his Facebook page and actually come out and answer questions about his company.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee invited Mr. Zuckerberg to testify in its Russian election meddling probe last year, but after extended negotiations, the firm — which is a massive donor to House and Senate campaigns — was allowed to send its top legal officer to testify instead.
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing at the time featured several testy exchanges, including when Mr. Kennedy cross-examined Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch over the company’s ability to police its advertisers.
“I’m trying to get us down from La-La Land here,” Mr. Kennedy said. “The truth of the matter is, you have five million advertisers that change every month. Every minute. Probably every second. You don’t have the ability to know who every one of those advertisers is, do you?”
Facebook denies any wrongdoing in the latest controversy — saying that data collected by Cambridge Analytica was obtained lawfully.
But Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, sounded the alarm again Monday.
“This is more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West,” the Virginian said in a statement.
A leading force in pushing Facebook to disclose the extend of its Russia problem, Mr. Warner is promoting more disclosure about the backing and funding for online political ads.
“Whether it’s allowing Russians to purchase political ads, or extensive micro-targeting based on ill-gotten user data, it’s clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency,” he added.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
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