Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is headed back to Washington, DC. On Wednesday, Facebook said the tech mogul will be meeting with policymakers this week to discuss the future of internet regulation.
There are no public events planned, a Facebook spokesman said. He declined to say whether Zuckerberg would be meeting with President Donald Trump or share any more details about the visit.
The Washington Post and Axios, which earlier reported the visit, said it’s Zuckerberg first known visit to Washington since April 2018 when he testified before lawmakers in the wake of a major privacy scandal. Cambridge Analytica, a UK political consultancy, harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission.
Zuckerberg in March published an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for for government and regulators to play a “more active role” when it comes to harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.
Tensions between Facebook and governments continue to escalate as the company battles more privacy scandals and tries to combat misinformation, hate speech and other offensive content. The Federal Trade Commission recently hit Facebook with a record $5 billion fine for its alleged privacy mishaps. Facebook has faced accusations that it suppresses conservative speech but repeatedly denies doing so. Zuckerberg will meet with US Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who introduced a bill in June that would make tech companies like Facebook liable for political bias, according to Axios. Sen. Hawley didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
This week, the company released more details about how a new board to oversee content decisions will work.
