Attention, David Fincher: The framing device for the Social Network sequel we never really thought about until recently but sounds more intriguing every day has arrived. CNN Money reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has, in the news outlet’s words, “come to terms with the fact” that he’s going to have to testify before Congress.
Zuckerberg, along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has been invited to a hearing on data privacy by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, set to take place on April 10. Zuckerberg’s willingness—or fatalistic resignation, as the case may be—to testify is being received positively by lawmakers, as it raises hopes that Pichai and Dorsey can be persuaded to testify as well.
Facebook has been by far the most discussed of the three companies in recent weeks, though, after a whistleblower revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm associated with and briefly run by Steve Bannon, had harvested data from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their knowledge and used it to create an algorithm that was used to target users deemed likely to vote for Trump. Zuckerberg’s apology for the leak—the essence of which was basically, “yeah, we fucked up, we’re trying to figured out where exactly we fucked up, we didn’t say anything until it was way too late, our bad”—was poorly received, arousing public suspicion in Facebook and its creeping influence over all of our lives.
With the Federal Trade Commission now investigating Facebook and its stock sliding as a result, Zuckerberg now apparently has only one stop left to go on his apology tour, and that’s to D.C. He won’t be going to London, though, as according to the BBC Zuckerberg has declined an invitation to appear before British MPs at a similar hearing, opting to send Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox in his stead. That hearing is set to take place after MPs return from Easter break on April 16.