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Zuckerberg testimony: Facebook CEO tells Congress he is open to regulation – live Zuckerberg testimony: Facebook CEO tells Congress he is open to regulation – live
(35 minutes later)
Zuck: People chose to share information with an app developer.
This is true only for about 300,000 of the 87m people affected. The vast majority simply chose to be friends with people who chose to download the app.
Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, is returning to Ted Cruz’s line of questioning about political bias in Facebook’s content moderation.
Lee: Would you put your thumb on the scale as far as the viewpoint of the content posted?
Zuck: No.
Whitehouse is now calling attention to the difficulty Facebook will face in verifying the actual source of funds for political advertisements, noting that a Russian operation could simply use a Delaware corporation and mailing address.
Zuckerberg concedes this is true.
Whitehouse asks about how Facebook’s bans actually work.
Zuckerberg says that Cambridge Analytica, SCL, and AggregateIQ are all banned. But he says that he doesn’t believe the company is banning individual leaders of the companies.
Whitehouse: Are the terms of service take it or leave it? Or can individuals negotiate?
Zuckerberg says yes, the terms are not negotiable, but again mentions the “controls” that users have over what they publish.
We’re getting started again. First up is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
But first, Zuck has a correction for the record: Cambridge Analytica was actually an advertiser in 2015, so Facebook could have banned them when they first learned of the data harvest, but did not. Zuck says that was a “mistake”.
We’re on a short break. If you’re following along from home, here’s the bingo card I made yesterday.
Are we ready to play Zuckerberg goes to Congress bingo? pic.twitter.com/VkIvDnphhz
Senator Ted Cruz is focusing his questioning on whether or not Facebook is guilty of liberal bias against conservative content, a subject of much suspicion among Republicans since a 2016 Gizmodo report alleging that moderators were suppressing conservative news.
Zuckerberg defended the platform’s political neutrality, despite the fact that its based in liberal Silicon Valley.
Cruz: “Why was Palmer Luckey fired?”
Zuckerberg: “It was not because of a political view.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal is pushing hard on Zuckerberg and Facebook’s statements that Aleksandr Kogan deceived the company when he harvested 50m users’ data.
Blumenthal has a copy of the terms of service that Kogan used, and points out that they included commercial use of the data.
“Facebook was on notice that he could sell that user information,” Blumenthal says. He says Facebook engaged in “willful blindness” and was “heedless and reckless”. He also asserts that the Terms of Service Kogan was able to user were a violation of Facebook’s FTC consent decree, which Zuckerberg denies.
“We’ve seen the apology tours before. You have refused to acknowledge even an ethical violation to report this violation of the FTC consent decree,” Blumenthal says. “My reservation about your testimony today is that I don’t see how you can change your business model unless there are specific rules of the road. Your business model is to maximize profit over privacy. I have no assurance that these kids of vague commitments are going to produce actions.”
Senator John Cornyn brings up Facebook’s old motto of “move fast and break things”.
“The broader mistakes we made were not taking a broad enough view of our responsibility,” Zuckerberg says.
Cornyn asks pointedly about the old line that Facebook and the like are “neutral platforms”.
Zuck replies: “I agree that we are responsible for the content.”
Senator Dick Durbin began his questioning by probing at Zuckerberg’s own sense of his personal privacy.Senator Dick Durbin began his questioning by probing at Zuckerberg’s own sense of his personal privacy.
“Would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” Durbin asked.“Would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” Durbin asked.
“No.”“No.”
If you messaged someone last week, will you share that with us now?If you messaged someone last week, will you share that with us now?
No.No.
Durbin says that this gets to the core of the issue of privacy. Zuckerberg again raises the point that people “choose” to “share” information with Facebook, which obfuscates the fact that Facebook can infer what hotel you stayed in last night without you ever “sharing” that information in a specific post.Durbin says that this gets to the core of the issue of privacy. Zuckerberg again raises the point that people “choose” to “share” information with Facebook, which obfuscates the fact that Facebook can infer what hotel you stayed in last night without you ever “sharing” that information in a specific post.
Senator Lindsey Graham asks Zuckerberg whether Facebook is a monopoly.
“It certainly doesn’t feel like that to me,” Zuckerberg replies, to chuckles.
Graham: “Why should we let you self-regulate?”
Zuckerberg: “I think the real question is what is the right regulation?”
Zuckerberg says that Facebook will provide Graham’s office with suggestions for good regulations.
The number of topics under discussion in this hearing is a bit overwhelming, but everything always comes to back the 2016 presidential election and Russia.
Here’s a clip of Zuckerberg stating that Facebook is working with the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, though he is not entirely sure whether the company has received subpoenas.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says "there may be" subpoenas from special counsel Robert Mueller's office, but that he has not been interviewed by the special counsel's team."I know we're are working with them." https://t.co/FZKnU3iHdJ pic.twitter.com/TbGbaMQcnJ
Senator Patrick Leahy presses Zuckerberg hard on its role in the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar, holding up a blowup image of a post calling for the death of a Muslim journalist.
“That threat went straight through your detection, spread very quickly, and then it took attempt after attempt after attempt and the involvement of civil society groups” to get Facebook to take it down, Leahy said.
“What’s happening in Myanmar is a terrible tragedy and we need to do more,” Zuckerberg began, but Leahy interrupted.
“We all agree its terrible,” Leahy said, before calling on Facebook to do much more.
Zuckerberg says the company is hiring “dozens” more Burmese language content reviewers, taking down accounts of “specific hate speakers”, and putting together a special product team that will produce some kind of “specific product changes” in Myanmar that he did not specify.
One of the great things about this hearing is that Senators are asking very basic questions about how its service works.
Senator Roger Wicker mentions that he’s heard that Facebook can track internet browsing even after someone has logged out of Facebook, and asks whether that’s true.
Zuckerberg tried to deflect, suggesting that staff would follow up, but then was pushed to concede that Facebook does indeed track cookies.
Senator Maria Cantwell’s line of questioning started with Palantir and wound its way to European data privacy law.
Along the way, Cantwell got Zuckerberg to commit to finding out whether Facebook employees worked directly with Cambridge Analytica employees during the Trump campaign.
Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, is offering a basic defense of Facebook’s business model, noting that nothing in life is free. He asks Zuckerberg what kind of regulations Facebook would support.
Zuckerberg mentions that it’s important that data policies be understandable for people – which feels like a non sequitur – and warns that too much regulation on issues like facial recognition technology could result in America “falling behind” China and other countries.
Feinstein is questioning Zuckerberg about election interference. Zuckberberg’s responses are largely hewing to previously released blogposts about the company’s plans for future elections and investigation of past elections.
Why didn’t you ban Cambridge Analytica in 2015? Feinstein asks.
Zuckerberg responds that Cambridge Analytica was not actually a Facebook advertiser at the time, so there was no way to ban it.
Thune also asked about Facebook’s ability to manage hate speech. Zuckerberg discusses artificial intelligence and increased staffing for moderation.
“There’s a higher error rate than I’m happy with,” he says.
Thune begins his questioning by noting that Zuckerberg has been apologizing for the same problems for 14 years and asks why Facebook should be trusted now.
“It’s pretty much impossible to start a company in your dorm room and grow it to our size without making mistakes,” Zuckerberg says.
Zuckerberg also explains that the company is going through a “broader philosophical shift of how we view our responsibility”.
For the first 12 years, Zuck says, Facebook thought that it was enough to just build tools. Now they’re reckoning with their “broader responsibility”, he says, using a key talking point for Facebook that we will likely hear over and over again in the coming days.
“It’s not enough to just build tools, we need to make sure they’re used for good.”
Senator Bill Nelson is questioning Facebook’s advertising model, and the use of personal information for targeting individuals. He seems annoyed that Facebook would hypothetically charge users for an ad-free experience, but Zuckerberg points out that Facebook does not offer a paid version, and apparently has no plans to.
Zuckerberg says the advertising model is “most aligned with our mission” because it allows the company to offer the service for free.