Pressure on Facebook has been mounting for weeks, after news broke that tens of millions of users of the social media sitehad their personal information exploited in ways the company had not previously acknowledged.Tensions over Facebook's business and breaches of user privacy are the focus of our weekly series on economics, Making Sense.Facebook's crisis of confidence with both its users and lawmakers is deepening with new revelations.The social media giant said it now believes that up to 87 million people, mostly in the United States,had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, the British-based political consulting firm that worked for the Trump campaign and others.Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg also admitted that outsiders likely accessed public profilesfor most of the platform's two billion users at some point without explicit permission.It's certain to intensify scrutiny from Congress next week when Zuckerberg testifies.Privacy is clearly at risk in America.And Mark Zuckerberg ought to be before the Judiciary Committee in public, under oath.The Federal Trade Commission is also investigating Facebook for possible violations of a 2011 agreement to protect users' privacy.The trail of trouble began with data collected by a researcher who created a personality profiling app on Facebook.That gave the researcher access to information about tens of millions of users.
