Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is meeting with a number of U.S. legislators later today, two days ahead of his public congressional hearing meant to see him grilled over the social media giant’s recent privacy scandals, Reuters reports, citing unnamed congressional aides. Multiple lawmakers meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg are said to be part of the committees meant to question the multi-billionaire on Wednesday. The United States House Energy and Commerce Committee already confirmed it’s set to hold a hearing with the 33-year-old two days from now, whereas the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees will jointly question Mr. Zuckerberg tomorrow.
Facebook’s CEO is understood to be holding multiple meetings with lawmakers today and while they’re all likely to pertain to the Cambridge Analytica ordeal and every related controversy that followed, their exact contents remain unclear. Following a mid-March revelation that the American political consulting firm harvested data on tens of millions of Facebook users in the summer of 2014 in an improper manner, Facebook suspended the company from its platform and vowed to introduce new mechanisms and changes meant to improve the overall privacy of its users. The company will begin notifying people it believes have been affected by the surreptitious activity later today. According to Facebook’s internal estimates, the data collection project compromised up to 87 million users. A whistleblower accused Cambridge Analytica of utilizing the improperly obtained information to serve the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election but the firm denied those claims and agreed to a forensic audit of its servers in an effort to prove it deleted the said data in 2015 after Facebook asked it to do so.
Last week, Mr. Zuckerberg said he takes full responsibility for the ordeal, having vowed to help Facebook mature into a more responsible company going forward, a sentiment he’s likely to repeat during his upcoming public testimonies later this week. Following a nearly year-long low of $152 reached in late March, Facebook‘s stock is now once again trading up, being priced at close to $160 as of 11:30 AM EDT, two hours after NASDAQ trading started today.