The problems keep piling up for Facebook[1], and it's unclear how long the internet giant will be able to brush them aside as it barrels toward acquiring its next billion users.
The world's biggest social network has unwittingly allowed groups backed by the Russian government to target users with ads. That's after it took months to acknowledge its outsized role in influencing the US election by allowing the spread of fake news - though before news emerged that it let advertisers target messages to "Jew-haters."
Now Facebook is under siege, facing questions from lawmakers and others seeking to rein in its enormous power. The company has turned over information on the Russia-backed ads to federal authorities investigating Russian interference in the US presidential election. Critics say the company also needs to tell its users how they might have been influenced by outside meddlers.
Speculation is rife that Facebook executives, perhaps including CEO Mark Zuckerberg[2], could be called to testify before Congress. Hearings might lead to new regulations on the company.
"Facebook appears to have been used as an accomplice in a foreign government's effort to undermine democratic self-governance in the United States," writes Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and now head of a nonpartisan election-law group, in a letter to Zuckerberg.
"Era of accountability"
Potter's group, the Campaign Legal Center, wants Facebook to make the Russian-sponsored ads public. The company has so far declined to do so, citing the ongoing investigations. It has provided the ads and other information to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of the Russia investigation, Facebook said in a statement, although it declined to elaborate.
The company that nudges its users to reveal intimate details about their lives,...