Several lawmakers urged Zuckerberg to voluntarily apply the European Unions sweeping new set of privacy rules \u2014 known as the General Data Protection Regulation \u2014 everywhere, including the U.S. But American lawmakers seem far from passing anything close to a home-grown version of those rules.<\/p>\n
Still, Congress has shown one strong sign that its willing to come together in regulating the tech industry. At the very moment Zuckerberg was testifying Wednesday morning, Trump was signing a bill \u2014 widely disliked in Silicon Valley \u2014 that would hold platforms like Facebook accountable for any use of their sites to commit sex trafficking.<\/p>\n
2) Theyre not convinced Facebook met its promises to the FTC<\/h3>\n
Members repeatedly pressed Zuckerberg on whether his companys handling of the Cambridge Analytica affair means that Facebook violated its 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission, which required the social network to protect users privacy in line with what they expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened here was, in effect, willful blindness. It was heedless and reckless, which, in fact, amounted to a violation of the FTC consent decree,\u201d Senator Richard Blumenthal<\/a> (D-Conn.) told Zuckerberg on Tuesday. \u201cWould you agree?\u201d<\/p>\n The CEO later acknowledged that in retrospect, his company should have disclosed the situation in 2015 when it first learned that a UK-based researcher with access to Facebook user data had improperly passed it on to Cambridge Analytica.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we should have notified people, because it would have been the right thing to do,\u201d he said Wednesday.<\/p>\n But he insisted that failing to do so didnt violate the FTC agreement, arguing that because the users had consented to sharing their friends data \u2014 as Facebooks policies allowed at the time \u2014 \u201cthe system basically worked as it was designed.\u201d Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has echoed that message in recent media appearances.<\/p>\n Some privacy experts, though, say the company may well have broken that deal and could be liable for fines amounting to $40,000 per violation \u2014 possibly totaling many billions of dollars.<\/p>\n This weeks hearings did little to settle that debate, but the FTC is likely to render some decision soon enough: It announced in late March that it is investigating the Cambridge Analytica incident. The FTC has been making due with only two members out of five, but it is on track to return to full strength, with five new commissioners awaiting confirmation.<\/p>\n Data privacy inspired this weeks hearings, but members were eager to put a full range of other topics to Zuckerberg while he was in the witness chair.<\/p>\n Some asked him about ads that run on Facebook selling everything from opioids to ivory. Others said the social network should have been more aggressive in confronting its use in Myanmars ethnic violence.<\/p>\n But the hearings most prominent non-data-related theme may have been whether Facebook is politically biased against conservative voices. Numerous Republicans brought up the case of Diamond and Silk, Trump-backing social media figures whose videos, the members said, had been restricted by Facebook.<\/p>\n \u201cIn that specific case, our team made an enforcement error, and we have already gotten in touch with them to reverse it,\u201d Zuckerberg told lawmakers Wednesday.<\/p>\n But he was far less willing to accept the idea that Facebook is, deep down, unfair to right-of-center Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cWeve heard today a number of examples of where we may have made content review mistakes on conservative content,\u201d Zuckerberg said in a response to a question from Representative Leonard Lance<\/a> (R-N.J.). \u201cBut I can assure you that there are a lot of folks who think we make content moderation, or content review, mistakes on liberal content, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The Senates round of questioning was widely mocked for revealing woeful ignorance of the workings of the internet, in particular Facebooks ad-driven business model.<\/p>\n \u201cIf dozens of senators hauled in the CEO of Ford, then asked him how their car goes so fast even though it doesnt have 12 little horseys inside, they would still understand the automaking business better than they understood Facebooks today,\u201d tweeted<\/a> Robinson Meyer, a tech writer for The Atlantic.<\/p>\n But the House appeared to show more flashes of tech savvy.<\/p>\n Among the most compelling exchanges was one between Zuckerberg and Representative Kathy Castor<\/a> (D-Fla.), who dug into the \u201cdevils bargain\u201d between Facebook and Americans that includes the social network collecting data on people as they drift around the web, even if they dont have Facebook accounts. Zuckerbergs somewhat technical response: \u201cWe collect some data for security purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n Even Wednesday, though, included less illuminating moments, as House members struggled with technology terms and concepts. When Representative Michael Burgess<\/a> (R-Texas) asked a vaguely worded question about Facebook \u201cextrapolating\u201d data, Zuckerberg was able to parry it with a simple, \u201cIm not sure what you mean.\u201d<\/p>\n While Washington has spent months fixated on how, exactly, Russian online agents made use of Facebook to try to shape the 2016 presidential election, the topic got only light treatment during Zuckerbergs lengthy testimony.<\/p>\n Zuckerberg detailed the steps Facebook is taking or preparing to take to address foreign election interference. Those include getting American political advertisers to verify via postcard that they indeed live within the U.S. and tapping artificial intelligence to identify and delete problematic accounts, like the kind created by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency.<\/p>\n But lawmakers generally left Zuckerberg unchallenged on whether, in the end, the changes Facebook is implementing will be enough to protect the American democratic process.<\/p>\n Zuckerberg told the House panel Wednesday: \u201cFor as long as Russia has people who are employed, who are trying to perpetrate this kind of interference, it will be hard for \u2014 for us to guarantee that were going to fully stop everything.\u201d<\/p>\n The questioning then moved on to other areas.<\/p>\n Theres been one persistent theme for Facebook critics in the Cambridge Analytica controversy: When the firm promised that it had scrubbed its records of the ill-gotten user data, why exactly did Facebook believe it?<\/p>\n Zuckerberg didnt provide much clarity on that point, though he did offer up one new fact about Facebooks point of contact inside Cambridge Analytica. \u201cWe commanded that they delete any of the data that they had, and their chief data officer told us that they had,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Beyond that bit of insight on personnel, the hearings didnt offer a great deal of new information on what really went down between Facebook and the Trump-affiliated data firm. And in some cases, Zuckerbergs responses only created more confusion.<\/p>\n For example, Zuckerberg said Facebooks internal investigations raised concerns about the entire British academic program that includes the professor who sold the user data to Cambridge Analytica. \u201cWe do need to understand whether there was something bad going on at Cambridge University overall that will require a stronger action from us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The university, though, pushed back almost immediately. A spokesperson told the Guardian<\/a>, \u201cWe would be surprised if Mr. Zuckerberg was only now aware of research at the University of Cambridge looking at what an individuals Facebook data says about them.\u201d The university said it has asked Facebook for more evidence backing up Zuckerbergs critique of the schools record but had yet to get a response.<\/p>\n Hillary Clinton campaign sources say their anger at the social network was strong during the 2016 campaign and hasnt dissipated much \u2014 all the way up to the Democratic nominee herself. Their primary complaint is that Facebook was well aware that so-called fake news, much of it anti-Clinton, was circulating unchecked on the site, yet the company did little about it.<\/p>\n Zuckerberg reopened those wounds this week, saying in his testimony Tuesday that when Facebook detected that Russian actors seemed to be attempting to manipulate candidates pages, \u201cwe did identify and notify the campaigns that they were trying to hack into them.\u201d<\/p>\n Thats not true, said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, one of a number of Clinton-world figures to take umbrage.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were never notified,\u201d tweeted<\/a> Mook, who now works on election digital security efforts as a fellow at Harvards Belfer Center. \u201cI hope Zuckerberg and Facebook correct the record.\u201d (Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale objected to Zuckerbergs characterization too, saying<\/a>, \u201cI wasnt told about this. @facebook needs to get their stories straight.\u201d)<\/p>\n The Facebook CEO was forced to clean up the comment in his House testimony Wednesday, explaining that the organizations Facebook reached out to werent the Clinton and Trump outfits, but their respective party committees.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was referring to the campaigns yesterday I meant the DNC and RNC,\u201d Zuckerberg said. \u201cSo I may have misspoken and maybe technically thats called the committees.\u201d<\/p>\n Original Article<\/a><\/p>\n [contf] [contfnew] WASHINGTON \u2014 Mark Zuckerberg put in what amounted to nearly ..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech"],"yoast_head":"\n3) Some lawmakers would rather talk about Diamond and Silk<\/h3>\n
4) Members of Congress are still learning to talk tech<\/h3>\n
5) Russia was left largely off the hook<\/h3>\n
6) The questions on Cambridge Analytica produced a pile of new ones<\/h3>\n
7) Facebook managed to annoy the Clinton campaign even more<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"