WASHINGTON (CBS News) – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faces another day of grilling on Capitol Hill as he testifies before the House Energy & Commerce committee on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg slogged through more than five hours of questioning Tuesday in front of senators, deflecting numerous questions for follow-up by his team at a later date.

Lawmakers did land a few uncomfortable punches, however. Zuckerberg, flanked by two senior Facebook policy officers, was forced to admit that employees were working with the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling, and also that he did not know about terms and conditions that put Facebook on notice that millions of users’ data would be sold.

The 54-member House committee will continue a line of questioning on Facebook’s treatment of user data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. </s> • Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Wednesday.
• He was there to explain the role his company played in the improper handling of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
• During the questioning, Zuckerberg confirmed thathe was among the as many as 87 million users whose personal information was improperly obtained by Cambridge Analytica.
• Zuckerberg didn't specify whether he downloaded the app that harvested his data himself, or whether his information was compromised via a friend.

Not even Facebook's CEO was safe in the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal.

During his second round of Congressional hearings on Wednesday, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg a string of questions about Facebook's responsibility to users, demanding "Yes" or "No" answers for the of her allotted four minutes.

When asked whether his data was among the 87 million users whose information was compromised, Zuckerberg answered "yes," providing no further explanation.

Only 270,000 users actually installed the personality quiz that data analytics company Cambridge Analytica used to gather information used to sway voter decisions during the 2016 election. The quiz harvested the personal data of those users' friends, bringing the total number of those affected to 87 million users, meaning there's no way to know for sure whether Zuckerberg himself downloaded the application or had a Facebook friend who did it instead.

Zuckerberg will be answering questions from 55 members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about Facebook's responsibility to users and the related scandals the company may have been involved in.

You can keep up with Wednesday's testimony on our live blog, or catch up on yesterday's joint hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation here. </s> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing regarding the company’s use and protection of user data on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 11, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis
• Mark Zuckerberg faced a tough day of questioning on his second day of US Congressional questioning on Wednesday.
• The Facebook CEO was grilled over what data Facebook collects, and his answers were often evasive and unsatisfying.
• Republican lawmakers were largely focused on allegations of anti-conservative bias at the social network.
• It comes after a Senate hearing on Tuesday, in which Zuckerberg avoided any real upsets.

Mark Zuckerberg's second day of congressional testimony didn't go quite as smoothly as his first.

When the Facebook CEO appeared before a US Senate joint committee hearing on Tuesday to answer questions on Facebook's scandals, there were no real upsets or scandalous remarks. He stuck closely to talking points, and the technical illiteracy of many lawmakers was on painful display.

In round two on Wednesday, in front of a committee of the House of Representatives, the 33-year-old chief executive was grilled more closely for around five hours, and at times failed to answer key questions as he pivoted robotically back to pre-prepared lines.

With just four minutes of questioning allowed per representative, however, Zuckerberg was never pushed as far as he could have been. And many of the lawmakers present were primarily preoccupied with allegations of anti-conservative bias at Facebook, a line of questioning that failed to produce any illuminating answers.

Congresspeople including Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and Tim Walberg (R-PI) hit Zuckerberg with a laundry list of occassions when Facebook has been perceived to have been censoring conservatives. Pro-Trump internet personalities Diamond & Silk were brought up time and time again, in light of how the social network recently labeled their videos as "unsafe." Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) even relayed a question from the vloggers: "What is unsafe about two black women supporting Donald J. Trump?"

Zuckerberg disputed the assertion, attributing the Diamond & Silk situation to error on the part of moderators, saying: "I wouldn't extrapolate from a few examples to assuming the overall system is biased."

The executive, who has never been a natural public speaker, stumbled more when grilled by technically adept members of Congress, and seemed unwilling to go into detail about exactly what data Facebook collects and how.

Under questioning from Representative Ben Luján (D-NM), the CEO was unable to say how many categories of data Facebook collects— both on users of its service, and on those users who have never signed up for an account, but it profiles anyway.

When Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) asked if Facebook has legal liability for content shared on Facebook, he punted and starting talking about unrelated changes the social network made in 2014 to its app platform.

And the exec failed to give straight answers when Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) asked about certain kinds of data Facebook collects, attempting to shift to a rehearsed talking point: "Congresswoman, the primary way that Facebook works is that people choose to share data, and they share content because they're trying to communicate."

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) summarized Zuckerberg's sometimes-deficient responses in a remark towards the end of the hearing: "As CEO, you didn't know some key facts. You didn't know about major court cases regarding your privacy policies against your company. You didn't know that FTC doesn't have fining authority and that Facebook could not have received fines for the 2011 consent order."

She continued: "You didn't know what a shadow profile was. You didn't know how many apps you need to audit. You did not know how many firms have been sold data by Dr. Kogan, other than Cambridge Analytica and Eunoia Technologies, even though you were asked that question yesterday. And yes, we were all paying attention. You don't even know all the kinds of information Facebook is collecting from its own users. "

I n Tuesday's hearings, Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook employees have been interviewed by the special counsel's office as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling, and he conceded that he doesn't think most users read Facebook's terms of service.

There were less explosive revelations on Wednesday — though the CEO did admit that, like tens of millions of other Facebook users, his personal data has been scraped and obtained by Cambridge Analytica.

He also said Facebook was considering legal action following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, both against the research firm itself, the researcher Aleksander Kogan who sold user data to the firm, and Cambridge University where Kogan worked. </s> The acting chief executive officer of Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm embroiled in controversy after improperly sharing data from some 87 million Facebook users, has stepped down. Alexander Tayler is the second CEO to step down since the scandal broke in March.

A statement on Cambridge Analytica's website says Tayler will resume his former position as chief data officer "in order to focus on the various technical investigations and inquiries."

The announcement comes during a moment of particular prominence: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying Wednesday before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, in part about that scandal. He testified in an hours-long joint session before two Senate committees on Tuesday.

In March, Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica from its platform after an investigation from The Observer of London and The New York Times revealed that the firm improperly accessed user data. Facebook users who downloaded an app developed by Cambridge University psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan gave personal data to the firm — as well as information from their Facebook friends who had not downloaded the app.

Facebook said it learned of Cambridge Analytica's violation in 2015, and was told by the firm that the data was deleted. Those assurances may have been false.

Though no members of the London-based company appeared before Congress, Cambridge Analytica advocated for itself online as Zuckerberg testified on Tuesday, denying any wrongdoing.

Cambridge Analytica has maintained that it deleted the data it received from Kogan's app when it learned that its retrieval violated Facebook's terms of service, and has denied that data acquired via the app was "used by Cambridge Analytica as part of the services it provided to the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign."

Cambridge Analytica suspended its previous CEO, Alexander Nix, one day after he alluded to tactics of the firm that may have violated U.S. campaign finance laws in a hidden-camera expose by Britain's Channel 4. "His suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation," the company's board of directors said in a statement.

Rep. Tony Carednas, D-Calif., brought up the announcement of Tayler leaving the CEO post to Zuckerberg as the Facebook chief testified before the House committee on Tuesday. Zuckerberg offered no comment on the change.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., asked Zuckerberg if Facebook was planning to sue Cambridge Analytica. "There were a number of other researchers who were building similar apps," Zuckerberg replied. "So we do need to understand whether there is something bad going on at Cambridge University overall that will require a stronger action from us."

Facebook began to notify users whose data was shared by the company earlier this week. </s> CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress next week as authorities investigate allegations that a political data-mining firm inappropriately accessed data on millions of Facebook users

FILE - In this April 18, 2017, file photo, conference workers speak in front of a demo booth at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, in San Jose, Calif. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress next week as authorities investigate allegations that the political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica inappropriately accessed data on millions of Facebook users to influence elections. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Facebook’s acknowledgement that most of its 2.2 billion members have probably had their personal data scraped by “malicious actors” is the latest example of the social network’s failure to protect its users’ data.

Not to mention its apparent inability to even identify the problem until the company was already embroiled in scandal.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters Wednesday that Facebook is shutting down a feature that let people search for Facebook users by phone number or email address. Although that was useful for people who wanted to find others on Facebook, it turns out that unscrupulous types also figured out years ago that they could use it to identify individuals and collect data off their profiles.

Related: Facebook’s Zuckerberg to testify before House panel on April 11

The scrapers were at it long enough, Zuckerberg said, that “at some point during the last several years, someone has probably accessed your public information in this way.”

The only way to be safe would have been for users to deliberately turn off that search feature several years ago. Facebook had it turned on by default.

“I think Facebook has not been clear enough with how to use its privacy settings,” said Jamie Winterton, director of strategy for Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative. “That, to me, was the failure.”

The breach was a stunning admission for a company already reeling from allegations that the political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica inappropriately accessed data on as many as 87 million Facebook users to influence elections.

Over the past few weeks, the scandal has mushroomed into investigations across continents, including a probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Zuckerberg himself will be questioned by Congress for the first time on Tuesday.

“The FTC looked the other way for years when consumer groups told them Facebook was violating its 2011 deal to better protect its users. But now the Cambridge Analytica scandal has awoken the FTC from its long digital privacy slumber,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director for the Washington-based privacy non-profit Center for Digital Democracy.

Neither Zuckerberg nor his company has identified those who carried out the data scraping. Outside experts believe they could have been identity thieves, scam artists or shady data brokers assembling marketing profiles.

Zuckerberg said the company detected the problem in a data-privacy audit started after the Cambridge Analytica disclosures, but didn’t say why the company hadn’t noticed it — or fixed it — earlier.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday on when it discovered the data scraping.

In his call with reporters Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the company had tried “rate limiting” the searches. This restricted how many searches someone can conduct at one time from a particular IP address, a numeric designation that identifies a device’s location on the internet. But Zuckerberg said the scrapers circumvented that defence by cycling through multiple IP addresses.

The scraped information was limited to what a user had already chosen to make public — which, depending on a person’s privacy settings, could be a lot — as well as what Facebook requires people to share. That includes full name, profile picture and listings of school or workplace networks.

But hackers and scam artists could then use that information — and combine it with other data in circulation — to pull hoaxes on people, plant malware on their computers or commit other mischief.

Having access to such a massive amount of data could also pose national security risks, Winterton said.

A foreign entity could conceivably use such information to influence elections or stir up discord — exactly what Russia is alleged to have done, using Facebook and other social media, in the 2016 presidential elections.

Privacy advocates have long been critical of Facebook’s penchant for pushing people to share more and more information, often through pro-sharing default options.

Related: How Facebook likes could profile voters for manipulation

While the company offers detailed privacy controls — users can turn off ad targeting, for example, or face recognition, and post updates that no one else sees — many people never change their settings, and often don’t even know how to.

The company has tried to simplify its settings multiple times over the years, most recently this week.

Winterton said that for individual Facebook users, worrying about this data scraping won’t do much good — after all, the data is already out there. But she said it might be a good time to “reflect on what we are sharing and how we are sharing it and whether we need to.”

“Just because someone asks us information, it doesn’t mean we have to give it to them if we are not comfortable,” she said.

She added that while she no longer has a Facebook account, when she did she put her birth year as 1912 and her hometown as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Neither is true.

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. </s> The senators groused and grimaced and expressed general disapproval with all that has gone wrong at Facebook, but they stopped short of giving its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, reason for panic on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Zuckerberg’s five-hour grilling by 44 lawmakers confirmed Facebook is in for a prolonged period of government scrutiny, but also highlighted how unprepared Congress is to impose game-changing rules on the world’s biggest social network.

Once lawmakers finally got Zuckerberg where they wanted him — under oath and forced to answer all their questions about Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and its lax privacy protections — they struggled to articulate how exactly they want his company to change.

WATCH LIVE: Lawmakers to grill Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg over data-privacy scandal »

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The proceedings brought into stark relief how San Francisco Bay Area innovation can be more nimble than Washington bureaucracy. Zuckerberg had to spend a good deal of time explaining the basic workings of Facebook, such as how its Messenger app functions. The biggest revelation to come out of the hearing may have been that Facebook has been approached by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and is cooperating with his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

As the highly anticipated hearing that was supposed to be a reckoning for Facebook stretched toward evening, the company’s stock price lifted; investors watching it did not see signs that lawmakers were equipped and ready to rein in the company.

Instead, the lawmakers mostly aired grievances. They had many.

Among the notable exchanges was one in which Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) demanded of Zuckerberg: “Would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” No, Zuckerberg would not. Durbin emphasized that the loss of control of such personal details by Facebook users necessitated the hearing.

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They drilled down on privacy invasions and other issues dogging Facebook, such as foreign operatives using the platform to influence elections, a proliferation of hate speech and calls for ethnic violence in Myanmar, and its vulnerability to discriminatory marketing practices. Again and again, Zuckerberg was asked how the data of 87 million unsuspecting Facebook users landed in the hands of Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked on the Trump campaign.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg said in his opening statement.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein demanded to know why Cambridge Analytica wasn’t banned when Facebook learned it had abused the platform years ago. California Sen. Kamala Harris demanded to know why Facebook waited until the media learned of the abuse — only months ago — to inform its users about it.

“In retrospect, we clearly view it as a mistake that we didn’t inform people,” Zuckerberg said. “Knowing what we know now, we should have handled a lot of things differently.”

If the tech icon who favors hoodies and gray T-shirts felt out of place in his Washington attire of a dark suit and bright blue tie, it didn’t show. Zuckerberg — who is also scheduled to appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday — confidently answered questions and rarely stumbled.

Pressed on whether Facebook should be regulated more, Zuckerberg said he would support the “right regulations” that “capture the nuances of how these services work.”

Working in Facebook’s favor is the reluctance of Republicans to impose rules more strict than those the company already seems to be embracing. But even they warned they are tired of the company’s long history of abusing the trust of users, publicly apologizing and then repeating the cycle again.

“I don’t want to vote to have to regulate Facebook, but by God I will,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “I just don’t feel like we are connecting. There are going to be a whole bunch of bills introduced to regulate Facebook. It is up to you whether they pass or not.”

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The Menlo Park, Calif., company has been on the defense since it downplayed the effect of Russian interference on its platform during the 2016 presidential election. The widening Cambridge Analytica scandal has also resulted in a new Federal Trade Commission investigation into whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree requiring the company to properly inform users about changes to their privacy settings.

The biggest threat to Facebook, however, would be new regulations that challenge the company’s lifeblood: access to increasing amounts of personal data from its 2 billion users.

Such access is necessary, Zuckerberg argued, to support Facebook’s ad-driven business model.

“We want to offer a free service anyone can afford,” Zuckerberg told the lawmakers. “It’s the only way we can reach billions of people.”

Rather than wait for regulation, Facebook in recent days has announced a slew of changes aimed at boosting transparency for users and limiting how much data is accessible to outside apps. Zuckerberg has also expressed support for the Honest Ads Act, a bipartisan proposal to apply the same disclosure rules to political ads online as those on television or print media.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), however, challenged Zuckerberg on the issue of competition, asking the executive if he thought Facebook was a monopoly.

“It certainly doesn’t feel that way to me,” Zuckerberg said, eliciting chuckles in the room.

Asked if new privacy rules introduced by European regulators were appropriate, Zuckerberg was less than specific in his response. “I think they get things right,” he said, drawing even more laughter.

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After the hearing, Graham said the “dark side” of Facebook needs to be addressed, and the government may not have the tools to address it. “It could possibly take the creation of new laws and regulations to deal with this platform,” he said in a statement.

Some Democrats are ready to impose them immediately. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Facebook’s business model would always favor data collection over user privacy and security, and new laws are needed to keep it in check.

“We’ve seen the apology tours before,” Blumenthal said. “I don’t see how you can change your business model unless there are specific rules of the road.”

He and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) pressured Zuckerberg to support their Consent Act, which would require tech companies to get explicit permission from users before using or sharing their personal data.

Zuckerberg said he supports the principle of consent but declined to endorse any such bill, saying “the details [of a bill] matter a lot.” Markey retorted that the act is a carbon copy of the new European regulation Facebook is going to have to live with starting next month.

But the measure has limited traction in a Congress conflicted about how to oversee a tech powerhouse that has had a profound effect on democracy but operates in a way many still struggle to understand. The platform is so widely used by voters that any unintended consequences of regulations could have considerable political fallout.

One of the few senators able to rattle Zuckerberg was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who complained the platform was censoring conservative content.

“There are a great many of Americans deeply concerned Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” Cruz said. Among his complaints: The muting of a Chick-fil-A appreciation page and the page of Trump supporters Diamond and Silk.

Zuckerberg said Facebook was a platform for all ideas and dismissed a suggestion from Cruz that conservatives were not getting hired at the company. He said Facebook did not fire Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey because of his political ideology, but would not elaborate on the reason for the termination.

Concerns that the company is also failing to police at the fringes were also fired at Zuckerberg.

Senators pressed him about the spread of misinformation and hate speech in Myanmar that has fueled additional violence against the Southeast Asian nation’s Rohingya minority group. Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) asked why the onus always seems to be on users to flag problematic content rather than the company itself.

He relayed an anecdote involving an erroneous photograph he discovered of himself that was being shared on Facebook..

“Isn’t it Facebook’s job to better protect users?” he asked.

Zuckerberg acknowledged the problems exist — but suggested the company is already ahead of Congress in addressing it. He noted there are 20,000 employees engaged in monitoring and security at Facebook, and the company is “hiring dozens of more Burmese language content reviewers.”

Along with that human oversight, Zuckerberg proposed a technological solution to a technological problem.

He said artificial intelligence and sophisticated algorithms will be part of the company’s broader plan to weed out bad actors on its platform. Lawmakers posed few questions on that.

david.pierson@latimes.com

Follow me @dhpierson on Twitter

UPDATES:

6:30 p.m.: This article was entirely rewritten to include broader political context.

4:40 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from Sen. Maggie Hassan.

3:50 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Sens. Kamala Harris and John Kennedy.

3:10 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from Sen. Dean Heller.

2:25 p.m.: This article was updated with details about testimony regarding Myanmar.

2:15 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from Sen. Christopher Coons.

1:50 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

1:30 p.m.: This article was updated after questions from Sen. Ted Cruz.

1:15 p.m.: This article was updated after questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

12:55 p.m.: This article was updated after questions began to focus on regulation.

12:10 p.m.: This article was updated after the hearing began.

This article was originally published at 6 a.m. </s> April 5 (UPI) -- Australia said Thursday it's investigating Facebook over the site's selling user data to research firm Cambridge Analytica.

The investigation will look into whether Facebook breached Australian privacy laws and whether it "adequately notified" users their information had been sold, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said Thursday.

"I have opened a formal investigation into Facebook, following confirmation from Facebook that the information of over 300,000 Australian users may have been acquired and used without authorization,"Australian commissioner Angelene Falk said.

"Given the global nature of this matter, the OAIC will confer with regulatory authorities internationally."

Facebook said Wednesday the information of as many as 87 million people may have been improperly shared with the British research firm.

Cambridge Analytica is accused of using some of the information to post targeted political ads for President Donald Trump.

"We do not know precisely what data the app shared with Cambridge Analytica or exactly how many people were impacted," Facebook said in a blog post.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify in the House next week to answer questions about data security.

Zuckerberg will testify April 11 -- and, incidentally, will face questioning from lawmakers who in the past received substantial campaign contributions from Facebook sources. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will question Zuckerberg, received the largest contributions, USA Today reported.

Since 2007, members of the committee -- whose jurisdiction gives it regulatory power over Internet companies -- received nearly $381,000 in contributions tied to Facebook.

Amid the privacy scandal, Zuckerberg said Wednesday that mistakes are inevitable when running a company as large as Facebook.

"What I think people should hold us accountable for is if we are learning from our mistakes," he said. </s> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Executives from Facebook, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter have been asked to testify to the U.S. Congress in coming weeks as lawmakers probe Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election, committee sources said on Wednesday.

A Senate aide said executives from the three firms had been asked by the Senate Intelligence Committee to appear at a public hearing on Nov. 1.

The leaders of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said the panel would hold an open hearing next month with representatives from unnamed technology companies in an effort to “better understand how Russia used online tools and platforms to sow discord in and influence our election.”

Representatives for Facebook and Google confirmed they had received invitations from the Senate committee but did not say whether the companies would attend. Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The House panel did not immediately identify any companies, but a committee source said lawmakers expected to hear from the same three firms the Senate had asked to testify.

The requests are the latest move by congressional investigators to gain information from internet companies as they probe the extent of Moscow’s alleged efforts to disrupt last year’s U.S. election. Lawmakers in both parties have grown increasingly concerned that social networks may have played a key role in Russia’s influence operation.

Facebook revealed this month that suspected Russian trolls purchased more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on its platform during the 2016 election cycle, a revelation that has prompted calls from some Democrats for new disclosure rules for online political ads.

On Wednesday, Trump attacked Facebook in a tweet and suggested the world’s largest social network had colluded with other media outlets that opposed him. The president has been skeptical of the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election and has denied his campaign colluded with Moscow.

The salvo prompted a lengthy rebuke from Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who said both Trump and liberals were upset about ideas and content on Facebook during the campaign.

“That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like,” Zuckerberg wrote on his personal Facebook page.

Other internet firms besides Facebook are also facing rising scrutiny over how Russia may have leveraged their platforms. Twitter is expected to privately brief the Senate panel on Thursday.

Republican Senator James Lankford, who has received classified information about Russia’s interference as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Wednesday that the country’s attempts to sow discord in U.S. domestic affairs had not abated.

Russian internet trolls over the weekend fueled the debate ignited by Trump over whether NFL players should have the right to kneel during the national anthem, Lankford said.

Slideshow (3 Images)

Also on Wednesday, the Daily Beast, citing unnamed sources, reported that a Facebook group named “United Muslims of America” was a fake account linked to the Russian government and that it was used to push false claims about U.S. politicians, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The group bought Facebook ads to reach targeted audiences, promoting political rallies aimed at Muslims, the website reported.

The Senate and House intelligence committees are two of the main congressional panels probing allegations that Russia sought to interfere in the U.S. election to boost Trump’s chances at winning the White House, and possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia. </s> Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a public apology Wednesday for his company's handling of users' personal information -- including more than 620,000 Canadians -- as the social media giant faced a growing international uproar over the questionable use of personal data for political purposes.

The company estimates 622,161 users in Canada had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica through apps used by themselves or their friends.

Overall, Facebook says that 87 million of its users worldwide were affected -- significantly more than the 50 million originally believed to be affected -- with nearly 82 per cent of them believed to be located in the United States.

The company said those affected will find out Monday if their information was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Zuckerberg said the privacy breach showed his company didn't take seriously its responsibility towards users "and that was a huge mistake."

"It was my mistake. So now we have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make sure we're taking a broad enough view of our responsibility," he said during an afternoon conference call with reporters.

"It's not enough to just connect people. We have to make sure those connections are positive and that they bring people closer together."

Canada's privacy commissioner said he wasn't surprised at the magnitude of the number of Canadians affected. Speaking in Toronto, Daniel Therrien said the figure will work into his ongoing investigation about the data breach and whether there were any violations of federal privacy laws.

Facebook is facing its worst privacy scandal ever in the wake of allegations that Cambridge Analytica used data collected without users' authorization to help Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and possibly other elections. Policy makers in Canada and other countries are now wrestling with how to respond to the spread of "fake news" on social media platforms like Facebook, which announced Wednesday it had also shut down accounts and pages linked to a Russian agency accused of online meddling in foreign elections.

Zuckerberg said the company would bring to 20,000 the number of workers dedicated to battling "fake news," as he apologized for initially dismissing the notion that the misinformation campaign had any impact on election outcomes.

The social media giant plans to restrict data access on its platforms, which includes Instagram, to better protect users' information. Facebook will disable a feature that let anyone search Facebook for a user with their email or phone number, saying in a post that "malicious actors" had used the tool to scrape personal data of most users on Facebook. And starting Monday, it will show people which apps use their Facebook information.

Zuckerberg is set to testify next week before a U.S. congressional committee, and he said top executives at the company would be dispatched to other countries wanting to hold government hearings on the scandal.

Canada's acting minister for democratic institutions called Facebook's admission of the scope of the breach "deeply concerning."

"While Facebook has begun to take initial steps to address these issues, it is clear that much more needs to be done," Scott Brison said in a statement.

Brison has said he'd be open to strengthening federal privacy laws, which don't currently apply to political parties. And Zuckerberg appeared open to further regulation in a sector that has so far shied away from government oversight.

International experts in the national capital Wednesday to talk about the issue of "fake news" said the Liberals needed to enact stronger privacy laws to better regulate how social media giants use Canadians' personal information.

"Since there are insufficient limits on what you can do with personal data, there is no countervailing force," said David Carroll, an American academic who is suing Cambridge Analytica in the U.K. to gain access to his data.

"We need to realize that privacy legislation will weaken the behemoths in a healthy way."

Other options put forward included greater transparency for online advertising that would enable users to easily learn who paid for a Facebook ad, how much they spent, how many people viewed it and why the ad targeted the user. Ben Scott, a former adviser in the State Department, said countries should look for ways to restrict the use of personal data for political targeting to avoid the kind of dirty tricks campaigns Cambridge Analytica is accused of conducting.

Sue Gardner, former executive director of Wikimedia Foundation, said there is general opposition south of the border to government regulations in the sector, with a belief that government involvement would make matters worse. Instead, recommendations in the U.S. centre around self-regulation.

"Those are massively insufficient for the scope of the problem," she said.

-- With files from Andy Blatchford in Ottawa and Dave Paddon in Toronto
United States senators question Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the various controversies the social network is dealing with, including recent disclosures concerning Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook data.