U.S. Senate to Mark Zuckerberg: Come in and chat on Russia
Hey Mark Zuckerberg, the Senate is calling.
The Senate Intelligence Committee invited Facebook to testify in an open hearing about how foreign actors (cough, Russia, cough) may have leveraged the social network to influence the 2016 presidential election, The Hill reported Wednesday.
The committee set the hearing for November 1. They also invited Google, Politico reported earlier Wednesday. Twitter received an invitation as well, according to The Hill.
These requests come more than a month after Facebook revealed Russia-linked accounts spent more than $100,000 on about 3,000 political ads during the 2016 election. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat and vice chair in the committee, has been calling for a public hearing since that admission. Now, the invitations have been sent.
Facebook confirmed to Mashable it received the invitation but declined to share anything else. Google and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While Zuckerberg has been speaking about the controversy his company has found itself in, the Senate apparently doesn't care if he is the one who shows up.
“I think it’s more important that we get the person who’s most capable of talking about the technical aspects of what they need to do to identify foreign money that may come in and what procedures if any need to be put in law that make sure elections are not intruded by foreign entities,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr told The Hill.
For the most part, Facebook has been silent on the potential of testifying to lawmakers. They have cooperated with former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation on Russia and the election. Shortly after Mueller obtained a search warrant the 3,000 Russia-linked ads, the company handed them over.
Last week, Zuckerberg announced his company would also give those ads and the other information they uncovered to the Senate committee. He accompanied that news with a Facebook Live, where he shared his team was committed to "election integrity" and would begin to self-regulate themselves on political advertising.
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
