On Monday, the House Energy and Commerce committee released Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared remarks for his hearing on Capitol Hill this week.
In March, Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company that worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign, was suspended for stealing data from Facebook profiles of millions of US voters. Many people criticized Facebook for not being stringent enough with its privacy policies.
Related: A Firm That Worked With The Trump Campaign Allegedly Stole Private Data From 50 Million Facebook Users
In a Facebook post on March 21st, Zuckerberg said, “I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it."
Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill will include an apology that he didn’t do more to prevent this breach of privacy.
“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well,” he will say. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives for Capitol Hill meetings ahead of scheduled testimonies in the Senate and House this week. https://t.co/1AahFnvno8pic.twitter.com/lYJHhCtgZX
— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 9, 2018
He will also explain the measures Facebook has taken and will take in the future to prevent another such occurrence. These measures include “building new technology to prevent abuse” and “strengthening our advertising policies.”
Zuckerberg is set to testify on Wednesday in front of the House Energy and Commerce committee. His full testimony can be found on The Washington Post.