The FTC is planning to fine Facebook $5 billion but in a letter to the FTC, Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Josh Hawley, a Republican, told the agency that even a $5 billion civil penalty is a “bargain for Facebook”.

They say that top officials, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, must be held personally responsible.

The FTC is reportedly contemplating a settlement that elevates oversight of privacy policies and practices to Facebook’s board of directors and requires the social media giant to be more aggressive in policing third-party app developers.

But Blumenthal and Hawley said the FTC should go further and set the rules of the road on what Facebook can do with consumers’ private information, such as requiring the deletion of tracking data, restricting the collection of certain types of information, curbing advertising practices, and imposing a firewall on sharing private data between different products.

The FTC has been investigating revelations that Facebook inappropriately shared information belonging to 87 million users with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The probe has focused on whether the sharing of data and other disputes violated a 2011 agreement with the FTC to safeguard user privacy.

The two senators also urged the agency to name any Facebook official who was behind any violation of a consent decree. “Personal responsibility must be recognised from the top of the corporate board down to the product development teams”, they wrote.