Highlights of Mark Zuckerberg’s Testimony with Congress
On Tuesday, April 10th, 2018, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, began the first of his two hearings in Washington among 44 members of Congress, driven by the exposure of Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign, which reaped the data of about 87 million Facebook users to psychologically profile voters during the 2016 election. Zuckerberg faced 5 hours of intense scrutiny from lawmakers for the online inception of “fake news” on Facebook, Russian interference during the 2016 election, and censorship of conservative media. Among this, highlights of his testimony include:
Senators warning Zuckerberg that they are doubtful that Facebook can keep control of its privacy promises and threatened to enact privacy rules and other regulations. He was questioned by Senator Ted Cruz about Facebook’s handling of conservative media, while Democrats had explored how quickly Facebook responded to Russian interference. Zuckerberg said Facebook did not notify the Federal Trade Commission about the Cambridge Analytica data leak from 2015 because the company “considered it a closed case.” He said that Facebook is “working” with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election but did not want to reveal anything that is confidential. Zuckerberg stated his biggest regret is that Facebook was “slow in identifying the Russian operations in 2016.” He made several commitments to lawmakers which include ensuring activist groups aren’t targeted on Facebook and promised that his company wouldn’t make “any decisions based on the political ideology of the content.” Zuckerberg also stated that “there will always be a version of Facebook that is free,” so an ad-supported model is “most aligned with our mission of trying to connect everyone in the world because we want to offer a free service that everyone can afford.”
As yesterday’s testimony took place, Facebook’s stock went up by nearly 4.5%. Stay tuned for today’s hearing to learn more about the fate of the social network giant.
