Mark Zuckerberg came out of hiding on Wednesday to address the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In regular Facebook fashion, it all started with the long essay trick in which the CEO didn’t actually apologize for what happened. He did eventually say he was sorry as he was giving interviews to various news outlets. In one of them, he also said, somewhat reluctantly, that he’d be willing to appear in front of Congress to testify.
Well, the Congress has spoken, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee would like for Zuckerberg to testify.
“The latest revelations regarding Facebook’s use and security of user data raises many serious consumer protection concerns,” said in a joint statement Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ)/
“After committee staff received a briefing yesterday from Facebook officials, we felt that many questions were left unanswered. Mr. Zuckerberg has stated that he would be willing to testify if he is the right person. We believe, as CEO of Facebook, he is the right witness to provide answers to the American people. We look forward to working with Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg to determine a date and time in the near future for a hearing before this committee.”
Zuckerberg told Recode on Wednesday that he’s up for testifying, but he didn’t seem that convinced.
“I’m open to doing [testifying],” the CEO said.
“We actually do this fairly regularly … There are lots of different topics that Congress needs and wants to know about, and the way that we approach it is that our responsibility is to make sure that they have access to all of the information that they need to have.”
“So I’m open to doing it if I’m the right [person],” he added.
Congress seems to think that the person who invented Facebook, who happens to be the CEO of the company, and who holds a comfortable voting majority is the right person to testify on the Cambridge Analytica mess. By the way, the UK Parliament happens to have the same opinion.
