Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Senate earlier this year to answer questions about the social media network’s Cambridge Analytica data breach. Now, a joint request by the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada have summoned the executive to testify.
In a letter penned by British MP Damian Collins, Zuckerberg has been asked to appear in London, England on November 27th to give insight about “disinformation and fake news.” The letter was co-signed by Conservative MP Bob Zimmer, who chairs the Access to Information, Privacy & Ethics Committee in Canada.
“Given your self-declared objective to ‘fix’ Facebook, and to prevent the platform’s malign use in world affairs and democratic process, we would like to give you the chance to appear at this hearing. We both plan to issue final reports on this issue by the end of this December, 2018. The hearing of your evidence is now overdue, and urgent,” wrote Collins.
“We call on you to take up this historic opportunity to tell parliamentarians from both sides of the Atlantic,” added Collins.
While Zuckerberg was specifically summoned, he has sent other “less senior representatives” to speak on behalf of the company.
As Chair of the Access to Information, Privacy & Ethics Committee in Canada am working with my counterpart in the UK MP @DamianCollins to call on @Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before an International Grand Committee on disinformation and ‘fake news’ Nov 27, 2018. #ETHI pic.twitter.com/8iOlXZVpoV
— Bob Zimmer MP (@bobzimmermp) October 31, 2018
Facebook recently revised the ‘View As’ hack numbers to 30 million users. Its previous numbers pegged the breach at approximately 50 million. Of that 30 million figure, hackers were able to access two sets of personal information for 15 million users: names and contact details, including phone numbers and email addresses.
Facebook announced its Q3 2018 earnings earlier this week, reporting $13.73 billion USD in revenue, 1.49 billion daily users and 2.27 billion monthly users.
Facebook has 23 million users in Canada.
Source: Bob Zimmer, Damian Collins
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