Washington: Amid a firestorm over Facebook's data privacy scandal, Mark Zuckerberg appears before US lawmakers this week with mounting pressure for new regulations for social media platforms.
The 33-year-old chief executive is expected to face a grilling before a Senate panel Tuesday, and follow up with an appearance in the House of Representatives the following day.
His appearance comes amid a raft of inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic following disclosures that data on 87 million users was hijacked and improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Lawmakers have signaled they intend to get tough on Facebook and other online services over privacy.
"A day of reckoning is coming for websites like @facebook," Democratic Senator Ed Markey wrote on Twitter Friday.
"We need a privacy bill of rights that all Americans can rely upon."
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, agreed that legislation is needed "to protect Americans' dignity and privacy from bad faith actors like Cambridge Analytica, who use social media data to manipulate people."
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