Energy

Dem Lawmaker Threatens Zuckerberg With Subpoena If He Refuses To Testify

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Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Friday that Congress will subpoena Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg if he won’t answer questions about his company’s handling of private information.

“My message to Mark Zuckerberg is: You are the right person. There is nobody better than you, in fact you have an obligation to testify,” the Connecticut senator told Axios. Democrats howled after reports showed Facebook exercised lax protection of user data during the 2016 presidential election.

Zuckerberg, for his part, told CNN Thursday that he would testify, provided he is the person with “the most knowledge” about what happened with Cambridge Analytica, a group that allegedly used Facebook to collect users’ personal data.

Zuckerberg also suggested Thursday that Facebook already solved a lot of the complaints associated with Cambridge Analytica but promised to do more to assuage deep-seated skepticism of the social media platforms effects and operations.

Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica on March 16 from using its services for violating a contractual agreement, which required the data management firm to remove all pertinent user information collected through an app.

The company originally allowed Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that worked with President Donald Trump’s election campaign, the ability to collect information on users’ friends through an app.

The consulting team was able to create millions of profiles based on trends and characteristics data, although it’s not explicitly clear how effective their tactics are and how much they affected the election.

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