In his first appearance before Congress since he launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room 14 years ago, Mark Zuckerberg took responsibility on Apr
In his first appearance before Congress since he launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room 14 years ago, Mark Zuckerberg took responsibility on April 10 for how his social network has been improperly used for political means, insisting that the company is working to prevent future malfeasance. The 33-year-old appeared nervous but contrite as he took the stand before a rare joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees, which together comprise nearly half of the members of the Senate on whole.
“It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here,” he said.
Mark Zuckerberg also said during his hearing that regulation of social media companies is inevitable, but warned that rules could also hamper the industry’s growth.
“The internet is growing in importance around the world in people’s lives, and I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation. But I think you have to be careful about putting regulation in place. A lot of times regulations put in place rules that a company that is larger, that has resources like ours, can easily comply with, but that might be more difficult for a smaller startup company.”
Of the hundreds of questions thrown at him by the lawmakers, none appeared to perplex the Facebook founder more than Senator Dick Durbin’s pointed query about where he slept the previous evening.
“Would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” Durbin asked during the intense and closely-watched hearing.
Zuckerberg paused for a full eight seconds, chuckled, grimaced, and ultimately demurred.
“Um, uh, no,” he said.
And “if you’ve messaged anybody this week would you share with us the names of the people you’ve messaged?” the Illinois Democrat persisted.
Again, a similar unwillingness to answer.
Perhaps more than any other senator during five hours of questioning, Durbin’s everyman tactic put a finger on the crux of the issue surrounding Facebook’s failure to maintain control of the private information of tens of millions of users.
“I think that might 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 connecting people around the world,” said Durbin, 40 years Zuckerberg’s senior.
Conceding to Durbin’s point, Mark said, “I think everyone should have control over how their information is used.”
His appearance, which lasted several hours, was a dramatic culmination of months of controversy over how Facebook allowed its medium to be misused during the 2016 presidential election. Last year, it was learned that Russians relied on the platform to foster political discord, using Facebook advertisements and pages to disseminate misinformation. Several weeks ago, media outlets reported that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining company with ties to the Trump campaign and other Republican entities, had acquired from Facebook the private data of nearly 100 million of the site’s users.
