In the wake of the scandal over Cambridge Analytica breaching 87 million Facebook users, founder Mark Zuckerberg will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C Committee) this Wednesday, April 11. And today, the E&C Committee released the Zuckerberg testimony in full. (Learn more about Cambridge Analytica, the breach and its link to the 2016 Trump campaign here.)
Wednesday’s hearing, “Facebook: Transparency and Use of Consumer Data,” will begin at 10:00 a.m. EST, and the E&C Committee said in a statement that it will be “an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online.”
A day prior to the hearing — Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. EST — Zuckerberg will appear before a joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce, Science and Transportation Committees. According to a statement, Tuesday’s session “will be a public conversation with the CEO of this powerful and influential company about his vision for addressing problems that have generated significant concern about Facebook’s role in our democracy, bad actors using the platform, and user privacy.”
Read the Zuckerberg testimony
In his prepared introduction for the E&C Committee hearing, Zuckerberg states, “As Facebook has grown, people everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool to stay connected to the people they love, make their voices heard, and build communities and businesses.” He names March For Our Lives and the Me Too movement as examples, as well as Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts.
Zuckerberg continues:
“But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.
So now we have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility.”
Read the Zuckerberg testimony in full below, or access it through this link.
Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared House testimony by Samantha Brodsky on Scribd
How to watch the Zuckerberg testimony
You’ll be able to live stream both Zuckerberg hearings online.
Tuesday’s session with the Senate Committees will be broadcast on the Senate Judiciary website starting at 2:15 p.m. EST that day.
You can live stream the Transparency and Consumer Data hearing on the E&C Committee website when it begins at 10:00 a.m. EST this Wednesday.
