US Senate opens hearing into Facebook plans for Libra cryptocurrency.
Facebook Inc is"delusional" to believe people will trust it with their money, a U.S. senator said as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle grilled the social media company on its plans for a digital currency at a hearing on Tuesday.
"Facebook has demonstrated through scandal after scandal that it doesn't deserve our trust," Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in his opening remarks."We'd be crazy to give them a chance to let them experiment with people's bank accounts." He received a frosty welcome from Democrats lawmakers and several Republicans, who shared many of the same concerns.
Prior to announcing its Libra plans Facebook was already facing significant backlash over mishandling user data and not doing enough to prevent Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The social media company has pledged that its payments subsidiary called Calibra will only share customer data with Facebook and external third parties if it has consent, or in"limited cases," where it is necessary.
One former employee told Reuters the company tried to keep the project under wraps even internally - staff who were not involved knew little about it, not even that it was operating under the name Libra.
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