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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.
Flake: Do you believe Russia or China have harvested Facebook data and have profiles on users?
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.
Zuck: We have kicked off an investigation. “I imagine we’ll find some things.” Says they don’t have specific knowledge of efforts by other nation states but says they assume other countries will try to abuse the system.
Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, is returning to Ted Cruz’s line of questioning about political bias in Facebook’s content moderation.
Senator Jeff Flake: What are you doing to prevent oppressive governments from going after dissenters?
Lee: Would you put your thumb on the scale as far as the viewpoint of the content posted?
Zuckerberg: We’re hiring more people who speak more languages, working with civil society groups to identify leaders of hate speech, and making product changes for some countries.
Zuck: No.
These product changes came up earlier in response to Leahy’s questions about Myanmar, but Zuck didn’t specify what they were. Now he says they may have to do with news literacy and fact checking.
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.
Markey is now asking Zuckerberg to support a privacy bill of rights for children.
Zuckerberg concedes this is true.
Zuck: We already do stuff. [paraphrase]
Whitehouse asks about how Facebook’s bans actually work.
Markey: I’m talking about a law... Do you believe we need a law to protect children?
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.
Zuck: I’m not sure we need a law.
Whitehouse: Are the terms of service take it or leave it? Or can individuals negotiate?
Markey: I couldn’t disagree more.
Zuckerberg says yes, the terms are not negotiable, but again mentions the “controls” that users have over what they publish.
Markey says we’re leaving children vulnerable to “rapacious” exploiters of their information.
We’re getting started again. First up is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, who broke the revelations about Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data, points out that Facebook’s stock has soared during Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony ...
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”.
Well done, senators... https://t.co/fbWlfyt29k
We’re on a short break. If you’re following along from home, here’s the bingo card I made yesterday.
Senator Edward Markey: Would your support a law that says Facebook and and any other company that gathers information has to get affirmative permission before it can be reused for other purposes?
Are we ready to play Zuckerberg goes to Congress bingo? pic.twitter.com/VkIvDnphhz
Zuckerberg: In general I think that idea is right.
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.
Markey: But would you support legislation?
Zuckerberg defended the platform’s political neutrality, despite the fact that its based in liberal Silicon Valley.
Zuckerberg: As a principle, yes, but the details matter a lot.
Cruz: “Why was Palmer Luckey fired?”
Sasse: Do you hire consultants to tell you how to tap into dopamine feedback loops to keep people addicted?
Zuckerberg: “It was not because of a political view.”
Zuckerberg: No.
Senator Richard Blumenthal is pushing hard on Zuckerberg and Facebook’s statements that Aleksandr Kogan deceived the company when he harvested 50m users’ data.
Sasse didn’t ask whether they hire experts in the field directly.
Blumenthal has a copy of the terms of service that Kogan used, and points out that they included commercial use of the data.
Sasse is now talking about social media addiction. As a dad, do you worry about social media addition as a worry for American’s teens?
“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.
Zuck: “This is certainly something that I think any parent thinks about – how much do you want to your kids to use technology.”
“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.”
Zuck says that if you’re using the internet to engage with other people, it’s good, but if you’re using the internet to passively consume content, it’s not that good.
Senator John Cornyn brings up Facebook’s old motto of “move fast and break things”.
Sasse is concerned that Facebook’s hate speech guidelines are based on feelings of unsafety and offense, which he says could result in the censorship of anti-abortion advocates not being allowed to speak against abortion.
“The broader mistakes we made were not taking a broad enough view of our responsibility,” Zuckerberg says.
Senator Ben Sasse: The conceptual line between mere tech company and content company is difficult.
Cornyn asks pointedly about the old line that Facebook and the like are “neutral platforms”.
“Facebook may decide it needs to police a whole bunch of speech that I think America may be better off not having a single company police... Can you define hate speech?”
Zuck replies: “I agree that we are responsible for the content.”
Coons: “Why do you shift the burden to users to flag inappropriate content and get it taken down?”
Senator Dick Durbin began his questioning by probing at Zuckerberg’s own sense of his personal privacy.
Zuckerberg points out that the company started in a dorm room with few resources, a response that rings hollow 2,000,000,000 users and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue later.
“Would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” Durbin asked.
Coons: “At the end of the day, policies aren’t worth the paper they’re written on if Facebook doesn’t follow them.”
“No.”
Coons mentions that he found accounts impersonating him just this morning, and only got them taken down immediately because he’s a senator.
If you messaged someone last week, will you share that with us now?
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.
