Today, Mark Zuckerberg is back on the stand in front of a House committee to talk about the recent data and foreign actor controversies. If you want to catch up on all of yesterday's happenings, you can
click this link for a full rundown of the events
.
10:00 am
Chairman Walden's statements are poignant and much more specific than yesterday's. Hopefully these politicians watched yesterday's hearing so we can avoid a lot of repitition.
Mr Pallone from New Jersey
immediately continues the dive into a perceived need for regulation over internet companies. He explicitly mentions the FTC's inability to ensure that Facebook and other companies like it actually follow the mandates it hands down. Worth noting that the repeal of net neutrality also puts the FTC in charge of policing large swaths of the internet. He's not asking questions, but this is a very coherent statement of current affairs. The party lines are clearly drawn in this hearing already.
10:10 am
Zuckerberg is giving his own opening statement. We heard this yesterday.
Chairman Walden
starts his questioning by directly asking Zuckerberg if Facebook is a media company. Zuckerberg says that Facebook is a technology company, even though it pays to create content. He reiterates that the company is responsible for the content on the platform.
Walden's second question is about whether Facebook is a financial institution because it allows friends to send each other money. Zuckerberg doesn't think so.
Walden specifically mentions that Facebook doesn't technically sell data to prevent Zuckerberg from falling into the "we don't sell data" routine.
Mister Pallone
is still eager to inject party politics. He asks if Facebook limits the data it collects, and Zuckerberg says yes. Pallone asks if Facebook will commit to making default user settings such that it minimizes data collection. He wants a yes or no and Zuckerberg won't commit to one of them. This is tense.
Mister Barton
from Texas reminds everyone that Zuckerberg is here because he volunteered. Barton picks up where Ted Cruz left off yesterday asking about conservative groups that he feels were unfairly targeted. Zuckerberg says the account he mentioned was subject to an "enforcement error." Barton then proposes a total ban on data sharing on users under 18. Zuckerberg points out user controls, but the language is too vague here for this to really mean anything. Barton's point about having to "work at it," to make your account private is well-received, though.
Mister Rush
picks up the conversation about Facebook's ability to provide information to organizations that track and profile activists. "Why should users have to opt in" for privacy is the rally cry of this hearing so far and we're still in the early stages.
Mister Upton
asks Zuckerberg what kind of regulatory environment he would want if he was starting a small company to try and compete with Facebook. This is an important note for all of this testimony. Zuckerberg once again says it's easy for his wealthy company to accommodate lots of regulations, but it could be hard for startups. Upton brings up a very specific ad rejection case for a State Senate candidate and Zuckerberg predictably says he isn't familiar with the issue.
Ms. Eshoo
says that American companies "owe something to America" in light of the misuses of Facebook during the 2016 election. Eshoo asked her constituents for questions to ask during the hearing. She asks a series of yay-or-nay questions, but most of them repeat yesterday's points. Once again, her overall point is about how hard it is to find controls about data privacy.
She asks Zuckerberg if his personal data was part of the Cambridge Analytica information. He says it was. She asks if Facebook would change its business model to protect privacy. Zuckerberg hedges.
Mister Shimkus
asks about Facebook as a platform. He asks who will conduct the audit on third party apps. Zuckerberg says the audit will start internally. If the company detects suspicious activity, it will bring in third-party companies.
Shimkus asks what information Facebook tracks on people who aren't logged in. Zuckerberg says it's for security and for ads. They track how many Facebook pages they visit to prevent scraping of public information. He says people can turn off tracking for ad purposes.
Mister Engel
from New York asks if Facebook plans to sue Kogan or Cambridge Analytica and Zuckerberg says it's something they're "looking into." Zuck says there were other researchers at Cambridge University who were building similar apps that they're looking into. Engel gives Zuckerberg the first chance to mention AI by asking if the company has made progress when it comes to preventing foreign influence on elections.
Mister Burgess
shows a Dilbert comic. In his last moment, he asks whether Facebook will make the audit data available to the FTC. Zuckerberg says they're cooperating with the FTC.
Mister Green
mentions the GDPR European consumer protections that go into effect in May. This is a much earlier mention than yesterday for a very important point. Zuckerberg says "all the same controls will be available around the world." Zuckerberg says the standards will go out across the world. This seems like a slightly different answer than he gave yesterday. He says there will be a tool that appears when people sign in.
Zuckerberg says Facebook might update the ability to download user data to comply with the data portability requirements in the GDPR.
Mrs. Blackburn
throws out the first
Trueman Show
reference and asks who "owns the virtual you?" She evokes privacy documents that apply to other industries and talks about The Browser Act from 2017, which outlines privacy rules across the internet.
You can read The Browser Act here
. It's similar in tone fo the GDPR.
Tennessee's Mrs. Blackburn holds up regulatory documents for other industries before bringing up The Browser Act, which would affect businesses regarding privacy online.
Ms. DeGette
dives immediately into the financials. Zuckerberg says that the Cambridge Analytica scandal hasn't caused an uptick in users quitting facebook or a reduction of interactions on the platform. She's pointing out past breaches and Zuckerberg struggles to recall details about the cases.
Mister Scalise
asks again about the Diamonds and Silk page that was taken down, using it as a stepping stone into accusing the Facebook algorithm of bias against conservatives. "I wrote algorithms before."
"There is absolutely no directive in any of the changes that we make to have a bias," says Zuckerberg. Scalise asks Zuckerberg to look into whether or not there was a bias.
Scalise then asks if Facebook worked with the Obama campaign in 2012. Zuckerberg says no.
Mister Doyle
asks if Facebook routinely finds out about violations through the press. Zuckerberg says sometimes they do. Doyle is outright accusing Zuckerberg of attracting developers to the platform at the cost of the users.
Mister Latta
asks how many apps Facebook is investigating. Zuckerberg repeats the "tens of thousands" number, saying that it will look at behavior patterns and then move to third party auditors if they find anything suspicious. Offenders will get banned, and they will try to ensure that the data is deleted. Zuckerberg says it will take many months and cost a lot.
Ms. Schakowsky
starts her time by reading back Zuckerberg's apologies in rapid succession. It's political theater, but it's effective. She doesn't think self-regulation works. She asks how long the investigation into the apps will take. Zuckerberg says "many months" and hopefully not years. Zuckerberg doesn't believe it's a "large number" of companies that have the Cambridge Analytica data.
Mrs. McMorris Rodgers
wants to talk about content. Zuckerberg says Facebook isn't doing a good enough job of defining community standards, in part because 90 percent of users are outside the US. Her worry is about bias toward conservatives, which is a common platform point with Republican reps.
Mr Butterfield
talks about diversity in Facebook and tech in general, which isn't a topic we've heard a lot about today. Butterfield asks Zuckerberg to organize a meeting of tech leaders specifically to talk about the lack of diversity across the board. Zuckerberg says it's a good idea. Butterfield points out a lack of diversity on the leadership committee.
Mister Harper
asks about the difference between the 2012 Obama campaign data usage versus the Cambridge Analytica issue. Harper is mad that people aren't as outraged about the 2012 issues vs. the 2016 issues.
Ms. Matsui
brings up the idea of content ownership that has recurred throughout the testimony. Zuckerberg says that once you share a photo with someone, it belongs to both of you, which is technically wrong from a legal standpoint. They're on different wavelengths and the answers don't match up with the questions.
Mister Lance
comes back from the break talking about censorship on the platform. He's a co-sponsor of the Browser Act, which Zuckerberg promises to review. He flat out asks if the Cambridge Analytica scandal is an FTC violation for Facebook. Zuckerberg says he doesn't, but Lance disagrees. He foreshadows future trials.
Ms. Castor
finally asks if Facebook collects data about people who don't have Facebook accounts. Zuckerberg stumbles hard in his response. This is the worst he has looked. Zuckerberg says that Facebook announced two weeks ago that it won't interact with data brokers.
Mister Guthrie
really dislikes advertising but appreciates that it gives him things for free. Guthrie's proposal is for ads to work like they do on TV with no targeting. More than a billion people spend more than an hour a day on various Facebook services.
Zuckerberg talks about the deletion process after saying he didn't know how long it took yesterday. He says a deleted account is immediately gone from public view but takes a while to filter out of Facebook servers.
Mister Sarbanes
asks if there were embedded Facebook employees in the Trump and Clinton campaigns, alluding to the huge disparity between the two organizations. The Trump campaign posted 90 times the number of ads. Zuckerberg says that Trump's campaign didn't get "special approval rights" for uploading ads in the late days of the election process.
Mister Olson
compares Facebook to a Navy ship. He harkens back to experiments Facebook did with users to see how positive and negative posts affects their mood.
It happened in 2014
. Zuckerberg once again talks about how actively using social media is good, but passively consuming it is bad.
Mister McNerny
refers back to his history as a mathematician who created algorithms. He asks if users can download all of their user information, including the tracked information like browsing history. It's an interesting question. Now he's asking about GDPR. Zuckerberg says "we're working on it" when asked if it will be in place in May like in the EU.
Mister McKinley
ask if Facebook should be allowed to promote illegal online pharmacies, then outlines some of the statistics about the possible 90,000 outlets for illicit drugs. He shows a screenshot of illegal drugs for sale from last week. I wonder if this is related to Market Place, which no one has mentioned yet. This is one of the first times we're hearing about AI tools to find these dealers today. Much less of that today than yesterday.
Mister Welch
asks a series of yes/no questions about what Zuckerberg believes regarding consumer rights. It's retreading things we've been hearing. Weltch wants to know who has the final say for privacy, the government or private companies. He asks whether Zuckerberg or not will help the committee create legislation to govern privacy. Not much new information here.
Mister Kinzinger
asks what information Facebook makes available to foreign state agencies like Russia. Zuckerberg says he has no knowledge of any time Facebook gave information to Russia. Kinzinger says that people have stolen his pictures and data to create fraudulent accounts. Zuckerberg is talking about AI tools again.
Mister Lujan
is the first to mention the public information scraping that was possible on Facebook by searching names and phone numbers. He traces the issue back to 2013 and asks why it took until 2018 to turn off the feature. Facebook has detailed profiles of people who have never signed up for Facebook. Zuckerberg says they keep data on those users for security reasons. Can someone who doesn't have a Facebook account opt out of Facebook's data collection.
