Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was offered a challenge by Senator Josh Hawley on Friday to sell his WhatsApp and Instagram properties in order to prove his seriousness about protecting data privacy. Along with this, Hawley challenged him to submit it to the independent, third-party censorship. However, Zuckerberg has denied to do either of it. The Senator and Zuckerberg held a private meeting in Senator's Capitol Hill office on Friday.

According to reports, Senator Hawley stated that, "he will believe Facebook when he seems some real action happening." According to him, the company should either put a wall around the services or sell them, instead of moving the social media users' data. Zuckerberg has denied commenting on the matter. However, Senator Josh Hawley stated that the former denied the challenge.

Read: Mark Zuckerberg met with the US Senators in Washington DC for a dinner

The discussion

In the meeting on Friday, Zuckerberg met other senators including Mark Warner, D-Va, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee. They discussed several matters like industry competition, data privacy legislation, election security and accusations by conservatives that Facebook and other social media giants are biased against right-leaning content, said the reports. It was Zuckerberg's first public visit to Washington since he testified before the Congress last spring about privacy, election interference and other issues.

Read: Zuckerberg sets talks in Washington on 'future regulation'

Facebook controversy 

Facebook has been under some heavy inspection from lawmakers and regulators after a series of privacy scandals. Though the privacy matter has been settled, Facebook, earlier this month disclosed that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating the company separately for anti-trust issues. The FTC along with the Justice Department and the House Judiciary is conducting the investigation of the big tech companies. Facebook is a social media giant with nearly 2.5 million users. According to the reports, the senators' message for Zuckerberg was that 'self-regulation is not the answer'. 

Read: Facebook to set up 'Supreme Court' to review its content decisions

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(WITH PTI INPUTS)