World Bulletin / News Desk

Mark Zuckerberg agreed to appear before a congressional panel next week, putting a spotlight on the Facebook chief executive and social networking giant pressured by a massive breach of private data and misinformation on the platform.

The April 11 hearing will "be an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online," said the committee's Republican chairman Greg Walden and ranking Democrat Frank Pallone in a statement.

"We appreciate Mr. Zuckerberg's willingness to testify before the committee, and we look forward to him answering our questions."

Zuckerberg will likely face multiple congressional hearings as his social media giant battles a firestorm following revelations that the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica obtained the data of 50 million Facebook users to try and manipulate US voters in the 2016 presidential election.

The Facebook co-founder has also been invited to appear before the Senate's Judiciary Committee on April 10, alongside Google chief Sundar Pichai and Twitter head Jack Dorsey.

His participation is yet unconfirmed but Senator Dianne Feinstein told the San Francisco Chronicle that Zuckerberg had agreed to attend that hearing.

Zuckerberg, who has been making a series of media appearances after staying silent for several days on the breach, said earlier this week it would take "a few years" to fix the problems uncovered by the revelations on data misuse.

He told Vox.com that one of Facebook's problems was that it was "idealistic," focusing on the positive aspects of connecting people and that "we didn’t spend enough time investing in, or thinking through, some of the downside uses of the tools."

The world's biggest social network faces probes on both sides of the Atlantic over the misuse of data, which Facebook attributed to a breach of terms of service by an academic researcher linked to the consulting firm working for Donald Trump's campaign.