Zuckerberg facing some calls to give up chairman role.
A push is on for him to step down as chairman of the company
Facebook CEOMark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify at two congressional hearings next week, but he and the company are doing plenty of talking in advance, in an effort to contain the damage from the company’s latest privacy scandal — including calls for him to step down as chairman of the company he founded.
Their message: They can see clearly now, and they’re on it.
Zuckerberg held a press call Wednesday in which he repeatedly said he didn’t “take a broad enough view of (Facebook’s) responsibility” to ensure that the company’s tools were being used to connect people instead of being abused.
“It’s not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure that those connections are positive and that they’re bringing people closer together,” he said during the one-hour call. “It’s not enough to just give people a voice, we have to make sure that people are not using that voice to hurt people or spread disinformation.”
Zuckerberg and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg aremaking themedia rounds in the wake of revelations last month that Cambridge Analytica, a U.K. political data consulting firm with ties to Republican donor Robert Mercer and formerWhite House special adviser Steve Bannon, accessed tens ofmillions of Facebook users’ information without their permission by buying it from someone who originally collected it for research.
Facebook said Wednesday that Cambridge Analytica may have accessed up to 87 million Facebook users’ data, although the U.K. firm pushed back and said it “licensed data for no more than 30 million.”
Amid calls by advocacy groups for Facebook to
notify affected people immediately, the company said it will begin notifying themMonday.
Facebook is also being urged to separate the CEO and chairman roles held by Zuckerberg.
Earlier this week, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” on behalf of the city’s pension funds and called for changes to Facebook’s board, including bringing in new board members and an independent chairman.
“Data is being used without people’s permission, and that’s going to affect the brand, and that’s a brand I’ve invested close to $1 billion of people’s money in underlying their pensions,” Stringer said.
Michael Connor, executive director of Open MIC, a nonprofit that works on socially responsible investing and shareholder engagement, agreed.
“What we’ve seen from the company and leadership under Zuckerberg is that they respond when they get caught,” Connor said in an interview with this publication Thursday.
The company’s mea culpa and promises to change its practices have come “in response to news reports, even though the company has known for a couple of years,” said Connor, who has worked with a couple of Facebook insti- tutional shareholders.
Facebook discovered that Cambridge Analytica had harvested the data in 2015, and reports about the consulting firm’s use of the data appeared in various publications. But the issue became a full-blown scandal for Facebook after the New York Times and the U.K.-based Guardian/Observer reported about the data leak in mid-March.
“If I were a board member right now, I’d be reading up on case studies about Uber,” Connor said.
Last year, Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick resigned after losing the support of the San Francisco ride-hailing giant’s board in the aftermath of the company’s handling of sexual-harassment and other scandals.
In his press callWednesday, Zuckerberg was asked whether the board has discussed whether he should step down as chairman.
“Not that I’m aware of,” he said. Later, Zuckerberg — who has a controlling stake in the Menlo Park company — answered yes when asked if he still feels he’s the best person to run Facebook.
Wednesday, Facebook confirmed that Zuckerberg will testify at a joint hearing of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees on April 10, and at a House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11, about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s data privacy practices. The company announced new data-access restrictions on the same day, saying that most of its users’ publicprofile information may have been scraped by “malicious actors.”
Facebook shares are down about 14 percent since the Cambridge Analytica stories were published in mid-March.