Capitol Hill pointers for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook says it will require advertisers who want to run either political ads or so-called “issue ads” – which may not endorse a specific candidate or party but which discuss political topics- to verify themselves.

“I think we need to take a broader view of our responsibility”, Mr Zuckerberg said.

A parliamentary committee in Britain has been deeply involved in an investigation into social media companies, and US lawmakers are bringing up renewed questions in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The company did not say what this number would be.

The company would not disclose any further details about the feature to Quartz. Facebook also acknowledged this week that almost all of its 2.2 billion users may have had their public data scraped by “malicious actors” it did not name.

Regardless of their intentions, Facebook now seems to understand that quietly removing messages from their users’ private chats isn’t the best idea given their current situation.

Privacy advocates have always been critical of Facebook’s penchant for pushing people to share more and more information, often through pro-sharing default options. “This work has not progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analyzed anyone’s data”.

She also said Facebook would introduce in America similar privacy standards to those that will be enforced in Europe later this year under the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation and ePrivacy laws.

The move to authorize issue-based ads comes on top of the changes Facebook rolled out in October, when it said advertisers running federal-election-related ads in the U.S. would be required to verify their identities and include disclosures.

“I’m quite confident it will not be more than 87 million, it could well be less”, he said.

From restricting app permissions for information like check-ins, likes, photos, posts or a group content to deleting a tool which allows users to search someone with e-mail id or phone number, the company is putting several efforts to restore users’ faith.

“If a company collects a person’s data for a certain goal, it has to obtain their consent – and under the new rules it’s explicit and affirmative consent – if it wants to forward it to a third party or use it for a different objective”, Wigand said. Zuckerberg is set to testify April 10 before a joint hearing of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees, and a day later before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And still, your data will remain on Facebook’s servers for up to three months.

The social network was under massive pressure after reports that users’ data were compromised after interacting with an app in the platform and sent over to Cambridge Analytica.

The people behind Mozilla Firefox have always been heavy on user privacy and security, which is why they are the first to take an official stance against Facebook’s abuse of user rights. “It’s not enough to have rules requiring they protect the information and it’s not enough to believe them when they tell us they are protecting information”.

A separate Facebook statement said the changes would help improve transparency and accountability of the network.

The hugely popular social site Facebook is in serious trouble with Indian Information and tech ministry as the revelation wasn’t made voluntarily.