Facebook boss takes a (booster) seat for his Congress grilling
HE is one of the biggest names in America. But Mark Zuckerberg clearly felt he was not big enough to face Congress inquisitors.
At 5ft 7in, the Facebook boss needed a booster cushion to make himself look more impressive during the first day of his evidence.
The US billionaire was ridiculed online – and promptly dispensed with it a few hours later, when a Facebook representative claimed it had been provided by the authorities and was ‘standard practice’.
Mr Zuckerberg was asked for the first time yesterday whether his own personal information had been ‘included in the data sold to the malicious third parties’, to which he replied: ‘Yes.’
He even said that those without Facebook accounts may have had their information tracked.
Yesterday, the tech chief, 33, started his second day in front of Congress by delivering the same speech as the first day. One member of Congress cut him off, saying: ‘I can’t let you filibuster right now.’
Another, Kathy Castor, accused Facebook of forcing users into a ‘devil’s bargain’ – by granting free use in exchange for information – then handing it on to advertisers.
During the heated hearing yesterday, Facebook was accused of ‘truncating the basic rights of the American promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.
Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell said Facebook used computer code embedded in websites to gather dossiers on virtually everyone online, whether they like it or not. ‘It doesn’t matter whether you have a Facebook account. Through those tools, Facebook is able to collect information from all of us,’ she said, referring to Facebook ‘Like’ buttons that appear on many websites.
Mr Zuckerberg was unable to answer Ms Dingell when she asked how many website pages had such buttons.
His grilling in Washington comes after the personal data of 87million Facebook users, including 45,000 from Ireland, was farmed out to British firm Cambridge Analytica.
The scandal-hit London-based company received the information from Cambridge University academic Dr Aleksandr Kogan, who asked 270,000 people to fill in a personality quiz on Facebook.
Probed on his company’s links to Dr Kogan, Mr Zuckerberg said he was ‘looking into’ suing Cambridge University.
A university spokesman said: ‘We wrote to Facebook on 21 March to ask it to provide evidence to support its allegations about Dr Kogan. We have yet to receive a response.’