Zuckerberg: Regulation inevitable for social media firms
Facebook CEO acknowledged that regulation of social media companies is inevitable, but after two days of congressional testimony, it was obvious Congress knew very little about Facebook, much less what to do about it according to analyses
FACEBOOK chief Mark Zuckerberg testified for nearly 10 hours over two days on Facebook’s privacy and data protection issues before committees of the Senate and House on Tuesday and Wednesday. He emerged largely unscathed from two days of high-stakes hearings that saw U.S. lawmakers grill the billionaire over how the online giant feeds users’ data to advertisers, according to AFP. The marathon 10 hours of questioning was one of the biggest spectacles in Congress in recent memory, followed blow by blow on social media under the hashtags #ZuckerBowl and #ZuckUnderOath.
Channeling public anger over data privacy lapses - including most spectacularly the leak of personal information from 87 million Facebook users to a political consultant - lawmakers in both House and Senate raised the specter of regulations to bring online firms to heel.
The 33-year-old CEO conceded that some regulation of social media companies is “inevitable,” while offering a laundry list of reform pledges at Facebook and vowing to improve privacy and security. But he stiffly defended Facebook’s business model - specifically the way it uses data and postings from the 2.2 billion users of its free platform - calling it necessary to attract ad revenue the $480 billion company depends on. In the wake of the massive leak of user information to Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Zuckerberg reiterated that the company had shut down the pipeline that allowed data - including his own - to slip without consent into the hands of third parties.
After two days of congressional testimony, what seemed clear was how little Congress seems to know about Facebook, much less what to do about it, according to Associated Press (AP). House lawmakers aggressively questioned Zuckerberg Wednesday on user data, privacy settings and whether the company is biased against conservatives. As they did in the Senate a day earlier, both Republicans and Democrats suggested that regulation might be needed, but there was no consensus and few specifics about what that might look like -or even what the biggest problems are.
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the panel and a 30-year veteran of the House, said at the begin- ning of the hearing that he plans to work on legislation but is pessimistic that Congress will pass anything.
“I’ve just seen it over and over again -that we have the hearings, and nothing happens,” he said.
For Zuckerberg, who often found himself explaining what his company does in rudimentary terms to lawmakers twice his age, the hearings could be considered a win: Facebook shares rose more than 1 percent after climbing 4.5 percent on Monday. And his company regained more than $25 billion in market value that is had lost since it was revealed in March that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gathered personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections.
Zuckerberg mostly held his composure, repeating many of the same wellrehearsed answers: He is sorry for the company’s mistakes. He is working on artificial intelligence technology to weed out hate speech and at the same time ensure that they don’t block people for the wrong reasons. People own their own data, as far as he sees it. And he’s come a long way since he created the platform in his dorm room almost 15 years ago. Some of the lawmakers talked to Zuckerberg, 33, as they would their children or grandchildren, and were occasionally befuddled by the complexities of his company.
Noting that a European data protection standard due to come into effect on May 25 was more stringent than what was currently in place at Facebook, Zuckerberg suggested it could serve as a rough model for U.S. rules in the future. Facebook is implementing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standard for European users next month, and some of its rules will be extended to U.S. and other users later, he confirmed.