Zuckerberg faces grilling
BILLIONAIRE Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg faced close to five hours of questions on Capitol Hill as he sought to hose down controversy over flagrant privacy breaches by the social media giant.
Perched upon a cushion to boost him higher in his seat, a contrite and composed Zuckerberg, who prepared for his first ever congressional grilling with image consultants, apologised repeatedly for not protecting Facebook users.
“I think we need to step up more,” he said as he admitted “tens of thousands” of apps are being audited by the platform in case they committed breaches similar to that which saw shadowy political firm Cambridge Analytica purchase and exploit the personal details of at least 87 million Facebook users.
“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm,” he said.
“It was my mistake and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”
While Mr Zuckerberg, 33, addressed issues ranging from how “foreign actors” used Facebook to influence elections to the proliferation of hate speech and whether the network censors right-wing opinions, the hearing repeatedly returned to the central issue of privacy.
This was best illustrated by Democrat Senator Richard Durbin, who asked if Mr Zuckerberg was willing to reveal which Washington hotel he was staying in, or who he had been messaging in the past week.
“No. I would probably not choose to do that publicly here,” Mr Zuckerberg said.
Mr Dubin replied: “I think that may be what this is all about; your right to privacy. The limits of your right to privacy. And how much you give away in modern America in the name of, quote, connecting people around the world.”
Describing letting Russia use the platform to try to influence the 2016 US election as one of his “greatest regrets”, he said he understood if the victims of the data breach — including more than 300,000 Australians — were angry.
“They did not want their information to be sold to Cambridge Analytica by a developer and that happened and it happened on our watch,” he said.
“I think we have a responsibility to protect everyone in our community from anyone in our ecosystem who is going to potentially harm them and I think we haven’t done enough historically.”
Mr Zuckerberg also confirmed Facebook, which is the world’s most popular social media platform with 2 billion users, was considering implementing a paid platform that would protect user data from targeted advertising.
The ad-free, or pay for your privacy option, was hinted at by Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg last week.
Facebook’s advertising revenue, driven largely by targeting ads on the back of what users tell their friends they like, was more than AUD$51 billion last year.
Senator Bill Nelson asked how Facebook would protect users who did not wish to see such product placements from flooding their feed.
“Are you actually considering having Facebook users pay for you not to use that information?” Senator Nelson asked.
“In order to not run ads at all we would need some sort of business model,” Mr Zuckerberg explained, later adding that a paid subscription was being explored.
But he said “there will always be a version of Facebook that is free”.
Mr Zuckerberg revealed the
company is co-operating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 US election, but would not elaborate further.
He insisted Facebook, which he repeatedly said he had created with a friend in his Harvard dorm room, was not too big to control. Declaring the company did not have a monopoly — which would open Facebook up to antitrust laws that could potentially see it broken up — he also said he was open to some kind of government regulation.
The most fired up questioning came from Republican Senator Ted Cruz, and what he described as anti-conservative political bias on Facebook, after Mr Zuckerberg defended it as a “platform for all ideas.”
“There are a great many Americans who I would say are deeply concerned that Facebook
and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” said Senator Cruz, a fundamentalist Christian
who challenged Donald Trump as a far right candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2016 election race.
He cited reports that the platform had suppressed conservative media outlets and pointed to a recent controversy where two Trump supporters, video-blogging sisters known as Diamond and Silk, were kicked off the platform after being described as “unsafe to the community.”
Senator Cruz also said Facebook blocked a post from a Fox News journalist and also suppressed “over two dozen” Catholic pages, but did not apply the same standards to leftleaning users.
Mr Zuckerberg said: “I understand where that concern is coming from, because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left leaning place.”
He will return tomorrow to testify before the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, starting at 1am AEST.
‘‘ IT WAS MY MISTAKE AND I’M SORRY. I STARTED FACEBOOK, I RUN IT, AND I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS HERE. MARK ZUCKERBERG
‘‘ THERE ARE A GREAT MANY AMERICANS WHO I WOULD SAY ARE DEEPLY CONCERNED THAT FACEBOOK AND OTHER TECH COMPANIES ARE ENGAGED IN A PERVASIVE PATTERN OF BIAS AND POLITICAL CENSORSHIP SENATOR TED CRUZ