In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to Capitol Hill to answer the questions of 44 US senators. The sole witness in a joint senate committee hearing held in front of the world's media, Zuckerberg was called to account for the alleged harvesting of Facebook users' data by election consultancy Cambridge Analytica.  

Fielding questions from senators representing millions of Americans from Rhode Island on the east coast to Washington State in the west, Zuckerberg said Facebook was striving to correct issues with its platform. The election data scandal risked bringing to a screeching halt the meteoric rise of a company that has engineered a paradigm shift in the way that we share, use and value data.