Facebook CEO to do damage control in testimony before U.S. Congress

TORONTO Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will tell the U.S. Congress this week that the social media giant is already testing a transparency tool in Canada, as part of a wider suite of policies aimed at preventing election meddling.

Zuckerberg was on Capitol Hill on Monday meeting with politicians ahead of testimony at two Senate committees Tuesday, and more testimony to a House of Representatives committee Wednesday. The congressional testimony is the climax of a weeks-long damage control effort on the part of Facebook ever since news broke in late March indicating that a British company called Cambridge Analytica used improperly harvested data from millions of Facebook users to try and sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favour of Donald Trump.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has already posted a seven-page advance copy of Zuckerberg’s opening statement, which contains a laundry list of measures the company says it is taking to combat future abuse of the platform, including hiring thousands more people to work on security and content review.

“I’ve directed our teams to invest so much in security — on top of the other investments we’re making — that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward. But I want to be clear about what our priority is: protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits,” Zuckerberg ’s statement to Congress reads.

Facebook now says 126 million people may have seen content from the Russian Internet Research Agency, along with roughly 20 million people who saw Russian disinformation on Instagram. Financial Post