Don’t spare Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg

Lawmakers must be tough and well prepared

Reclusive Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s week of reckoning is here. He’ll finally face questions from Congress about his company’s negligence in allowing Cambridge Analytica to filch personal data on as many as 87 million Facebook subscribers without their assent — and use the information to boost the electoral fortunes of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

For far too long, Zuckerberg has relied upon legions of surrogates, underlings and flacks and a blizzard of apologetic press releases to shield him from accountability. The burden is now on three Senate and House committees to press the attack on his elaborately crafted image that he is nothing more than a humble coder who cares more about lavishing billions of dollars on worthy causes than selling ad space on his platform.

Zuckerberg will certainly shed the gray T-shirt of humility for the occasion. In prepared testimony, he has already offered repentance and vowed to do better. But committee members cannot let him off the hook. In the past, they have proved willing to mercilessly grill business executives, high-level political appointees and lobbyists, and wring confessions from them.

In 2005, Republican John McCain of Arizona used his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to expose the fraudulent licensing of casinos by officials of the Interior Department as part of a broader investigation into the machinations of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Before that there was Rep. Henry Waxman’s 1994 interrogation of tobacco company executives. The California Democrat compelled them to produce evidence from their own scientists showing that, contrary to their claims, their product was addictive.

If the committee members do their homework, they may reveal problems with Facebook that have yet to surface, or even illuminate broader issues of privacy and manipulation across the tech industry. A well-prepared questioner is able to elicit revealing facts and reactions from even the most evasive witnesses.

In December, Sen. John Neely Kennedy, R-La., respectfully but relentlessly pressed President Trump’s nominee for a judgeship on the U.S. District Court. His questions revealed that the candidate was not only lacking in any judicial experience, but also was unable to answer questions that could have been tackled by most third-year law students. The nomination was subsequently withdrawn.

There might be a temptation on the part of some members to be gentle with the Hermit of Menlo Park because of his philanthropy and shy, boyish manner. But Zuckerberg is one of the richest men in the world, and even if he were to give away every penny of his immense fortune to lepers and orphans, he’d still captain a vast fleet that carries in its holds the personal information of billions of people around the world — yet allows data pirates such as Cambridge Analytica to board the ships and loot the cargo.

I am not urging the committee members to be brutal or disrespectful to the self-effacing young mogul, but they must extract from him concrete and significant pledges to rid his hugely lucrative platform of the scamming, trolling and deception with which it has been infested. For too long, Facebook executives have sought to shield him.

Members of Congress have been remarkably deferential to Zuckerberg’s aversion to making no public statements other than occasional inspirational messages on his own terms about the benevolence of Facebook’s mission. Now they must press him to consider changing the site’s business model, which is driven almost solely by advertising revenues. Above all, they must be prepared to hold over his head the possibility of stringent regulation.

The power to probe lies at the very heart of congressional responsibilities. Lawmakers have waited long enough for Zuckerberg to consent to testify. It would be a squandered opportunity if they did not pursue their inquest aggressively.