WASHINGTON – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg visibly seemed perturbed and defiant at the same time during the second and last day of his testimony to the US Congress on Wednesday.
The 33-year-old techie was grilled by US Congressmen and Congresswomen more closely for around five hours but he answered the tough and ‘silly’ questions alike bearing a smile on his face.
Mark Zuckerberg opened his hearing with another apology and completed the hearing unscathed partially because of his robotic replies and mainly because of a lack of full grasp of technology by the investigators.
Here are a few takeaways from the second-day hearing:
- Ironically, the Facebook founder revealed that he was among the 87 million users who became a victim of Cambridge Analytica data breach
- Zuckerberg stated that he wouldn’t ‘extrapolate from a few examples to assuming the overall system is biased,’ when asked about the censorship, apparently favouring Donald Trump
- The CEO was unable to answer how many categories of data Facebook collects
- When asked about collecting a specific type of data, the exec said that the primary way how Facebook works is that people choose to share data, and they share content because they’re trying to communicate
- California Democrat Anna Eshoo asked Mr. Zuckerberg: “Are you willing to change your business model to protect users’ privacy?” Mr. Zuckerberg replied: “Congresswoman, I’m not sure what that means.”
- Representative Joe Barton asked Mr. Zuckerberg if he would agree that Facebook would work to ensure it is a neutral public platform. Zuckerberg replied: I do agree that we should give people a voice.
- Michigan Democrat, Debbie Dingell asked how many ‘like’ buttons are there in non-Facebook pages?Zuckerberg responded: I don’t know the answer to that.Dingell continues, How many ‘share’ buttons are there in non-Facebook pages? Zuckerberg replied: I don’t know the answer to that, we can follow up and get back to you.
- On terrorism, Mark Zuckerberg said: Terrorist content propaganda has no place in” Facebook’s network.
- On buying data from brokers, Zuckerberg said they did so in the past, but have announced the practice will be shut down.
- When asked about whether Facebook listens to users’ phone calls? Zuckerberg replied: We only use the microphone when a user is recording video. We do not have anything to listen to what is in the background.
- The Facebook owner confirmed that they have a policy where they can delete, rescind emails after some time but indicated that anything with a legal value is not deleted.
- When asked whether Facebook can exist without collecting and selling user data, the tech-genius replied: It would not be possible for our services to exist, without having the option for users to put in the content and then sharing.
Most Tricky Question
One of the most difficult situations for Zuckerberg was when he was asked about his own privacy on the first day of hearing.
To illustrate Facebook privacy concerns, Senator Durbin asked Mark Zuckerberg what hotel he stayed in.
However, Zuckerberg paused for eight seconds, chuckled, and ultimately murmured.
“Um, uh, no,”
And “if you’ve messaged anybody this week would you share with us the names of the people you’ve messaged?” the Illinois Democrat persisted.
Again, a similar unwillingness to answer.
