X

AOC is crowdsourcing questions for Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is taking suggestions for questions to ask the Facebook CEO on Wednesday.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
Expertise I have more than 30 years' experience in journalism in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Steven Musil
gettyimages-9443635561

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg returns to Washington on Wednesday to face questions about his company's cryptocurrency effort, Libra.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Got questions for Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook ? Chances are, you do. Probably lots.

And you might get your chance Wednesday. The chief of the social networking giant, which has 2.7 billion monthly users, is scheduled to testify before the US House Committee on Financial Services, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic member of the committee, began soliciting questions for Zuckerberg from her followers on Twitter.

"Hypothetically, if you were, say, a member of Congress sitting on the Financial Services Committee given 5 minutes to question Mark Zuckerberg, what would you ask?" she tweeted Tuesday.

Her crowdsourcing effort had attracted thousands of responses less than an hour after her tweet. Many focused on why the company continues to accept political ads that violate Facebook's own misinformation policy. Others asked whether Facebook should be regulated, while others wanted to see the company's algorithms.

Many intriguing questions, but most appear a bit off topic for the House committee. Wednesday's hearing is called An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors and will deal with Facebook's planned cryptocurrency, Libra.

This isn't Zuckerberg's first appearance before a congressional committee. In April 2018, Zuckerberg testified before committees in both the House and the Senate for a total of 10 hours over two days. He answered questions about Facebook's handling of user data, its privacy practices and the basics of how the social network operates.

Facebook declined to comment.