Washington • Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is due to face the harsh spotlight of a televised congressional hearing Tuesday afternoon amid demands that he explain how his company came to imperil the privacy of tens of millions of Americans as well as spread phony news and enable Russian disinformation.
The company, founded in 2004 in Zuckerberg’s Harvard University dorm room, long has drawn fire for its repeated privacy controversies. But it has reached new levels in recent weeks, producing rare bipartisan scrutiny about the power of social media to twist public discourse and jeopardize the functioning of democracies - concerns that may lead to greater regulation of the powerful and profitable technology industry.