Facebook is committed to ensure the integrity of elections in countries like India, Pakistan and the US, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said .

He was responding to the questions asked by senators over the Cambridge Analytica scandal that has shaken the social media giant.

Zuckerberg’s first day of testimony came after it was recently revealed that the British marketing firm Cambridge Analytica tied to US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign improperly collected profile data of up to 87 million Facebook users, media reports said.

The scandal shook confidence in Facebook, leading some people to go as far as abandoning the social media site altogether – a revolt called the hashtag #DeleteFacebook, the reports said.

Zuckerberg, 33, who is also the founder of Facebook, reportedly said data privacy and foreign interference in elections were topics that they have discussed at the Facebook board meeting

“These are some of the biggest issues that the company has faced, and we feel a huge responsibility to get these right,” he reportedly told lawmakers, adding that “this is one of my top priorities in 2018”.

He said Facebook was taking steps to ensure integrity of elections in countries like the United States, India, Brazil, and Pakistan.

“2018 is is an incredibly important year for elections. Not just in the US mid-terms, but, around the world, there are important elections — in India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and Hungary — and we want to make sure we do everything we can to protect the integrity of these elections,” PTI quoted him as saying.

Zuckerberg admitted that his organisation faces charges of failing to prevent Cambridge Analytica from gathering personal information of Facebook users to try to influence election, the report said.