The United States looks at ways to keep Zuckerberg accountable for Facebook's problems
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By Dylan Byers and Cyrus Farivar
Federal regulators discuss about and how to keep Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally responsible for the company's history of abusing users' private data, two sources familiar with the discussions, NBC News told Thursday.
The sources would not elaborate on what measures are particularly under consideration. The Washington Post, which first reported on developments, reported that regulators explored increased oversight of Zuckerberg's leadership.
Although Facebook has been investigated for privacy practices for many years, both the democratic members of the FTC have said that the agency should
Justin Brookman, former technology research chief of the Federal Trade Commission or FTC, said Thursday night that while the FTC may mention individual corporate executives if they ruled, controlled and knew of any errors, "they usually only use that authority in fraud-like cases as far as I can tell."
Discussions come as the FTC is more than a year in a survey of Facebook's data management practices.
A spokesman for Facebook refused to comment on the discussions and said only: "We hope to reach an appropriate and fair solution."
FTC said in March last year that reports were being investigated that British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica mistakenly accessed the data of millions of Facebook users, seven years after Facebook agreed to improve its privacy practices to settle a dispute with the FTC.
The company confirmed in July that it was being investigated not only by the FTC but also by the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
However, information about Facebook's abuse of user data has continued regularly since then. Lastly, the company said Wednesday night that it may have "unintentionally uploaded" email contacts to as many as 1.5 million users who signed up for the service since May 2016.
Zuckerberg has been under pressure from regulators and lawmakers for what They have been characterized as his inadequate measures to back up the company's serial promises to do better.
This week, NBC News reported that Zuckerberg is monitoring plans to process users' data as a negotiating chip with partner companies, according to thousands of pages of corporate documents ranging from 2011 to 2015.
Alex Johnson contributed.
