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New investigations into Facebook add new pressures

Federal regulators and state prosecutors are opening investigations into Facebook. Politicians in the United States and Europe are calling for its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to testify before them.

Facebook has built its highly profitable social network off its users, selling advertisements based on their ages, interests and other details. But the scrutiny over the company’s vast trove of personal data — following a report that a political consulting firm had improperly obtained information of 50 million users — is taking direct aim at that lucrative formula.

So far, most of the social network’s top executives have been silent. Zuckerberg, its founder, and Sheryl Sandberg, his top deputy, have not made any public statements in recent days. The pair did not appear at an employee meeting on Tuesday in Menlo Park, California, where the company is based.

At the meeting, employees asked questions about the continuing internal investigation into the use of Facebook data by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The firm, which was tied to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, used the data to target messages to voters.

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The company has faced internal dissent over its broader role in spreading disinformation during the presidential campaign and its response to it. The tensions have prompted the planned departure of Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, who plans to leave in August.

The Cambridge Analytica revelations have forced Facebook to scramble to assuage fresh concerns by regulators and lawmakers. The company is sending its representatives to Capitol Hill and arranging conversations with state attorneys general to try to answer questions about how the firm collected the information of Facebook users.

The social networking giant is also facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, which is looking into whether Facebook violated an agreement with the agency, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry.

The FTC investigation is connected to a settlement the agency reached with Facebook in 2011 after finding that the company had told users that third-party apps on the social media site, like games, would not be allowed to access their data. But the apps, the agency found, were able to obtain almost all personal information about a user.

The current investigation has parallels. The information on the 50 million users was harvested in 2014 by an outside researcher, Alexander Kogan. Kogan, a professor at Cambridge University, paid users to take a personality quiz and download an app, which collected private information from their profiles and from those of their friends. Facebook allowed that sort of data collection at the time.

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Then, Kogan gave the information to Cambridge Analytica, a firm founded by Stephen Bannon, the former White House political adviser, and Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor. Passing the information to a third party violated Facebook’s policies, the company said last week.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

CECILIA KANG © 2018 The New York Times

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