Hardly ’friends’: Zuckerberg fends off senators on privacy

WASHINGTON — Under fire for the worst privacy debacle in his company’s history, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg batted away often aggressive questioning Tuesday from lawmakers who accused him of failing to protect the personal information of millions of Americans from Russians intent on upsetting the U.S. election.

During some five hours of Senate questioning, Zuckerberg apologized several times for Facebook failures, disclosed that his company was “working with” special counsel Robert Mueller in the federal probe of Russian election interference and said it was working hard to change its own operations after the harvesting of users’ private data by a datamining company affiliated with Donald Trump’s campaign.

Seemingly unimpressed, Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said Zuckerberg’s company had a 14-year history of apologizing for “ill-advised decisions” related to user privacy. “How is today’s apology different?” Thune asked.

“We have made a lot of mistakes in running the company,” Zuckerberg conceded, and Facebook must work harder at ensuring the tools it creates are used in “good and healthy” ways.

The controversy has brought a flood of bad publicity and sent the company’s stock value plunging, but Zuckerberg seemed to achieve a measure of success in countering that: Facebook shares surged 4.5 percent for the day, the biggest gain in two years.

In all, he skated largely unharmed through his first day of congressional testimony. He’ll face House questioners Wednesday.

The 33-year-old founder of the world’s bestknown social media giant appeared in a suit and tie, a departure from the T-shirt he’s famous for wearing in public as well as in private. Even so, his youth cast a sharp contrast with his often elderly, gray-haired Senate inquisitors. And the enormous complexity of the social network he created at times defeated the attempts of legislators to hammer him on Facebook’s specific failures and how to fix them.