- Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress next Wednesday.
- The appearance in Washington D.C. will take place on Wednesday, April 11. He's answering questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
- The Congressional hearing is the latest development in the Facebook privacy scandal, related to the data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
- Zuckerberg was reportedly preparing for the possibility of testifying before Congress.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is headed to Congress next Wednesday to face questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
The hearing will take place at 10AM, and is expected to largely focus on the most recent data scandal involving Facebook and data firm Cambridge Analytica, which was revealed in reports from The New York Times and The Guardian to have improperly obtained and used the data of over 50 million Facebook users.
"This hearing 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 statement from the ranking members of the committee says.
Cambridge Analytica was employed by President Donald Trump's campaign to target ads to voters; former Trump campaign CEO and White House senior strategist Steve Bannon was involved with the firm, and has since said he came up with the name.
The controversy regarding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica centers on the latter's improper use of Facebook user data, and how Facebook handled the misuse of user data once it learned of it. Much of the data was collected many years ago, when Facebook allowed third-party apps to collect not just your data but also your friends' data.
Zuckerberg initially responded to the news with silence, though he's been on a public relations offensive lately — doing interviews, offering apologies and, now, agreeing to appear in front of Congress.
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