Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg pulled off a smooth appearance in a joint Senate hearing today, dodging most questions while maintaining an adequately patient vibe through five hours of varied but mostly tame questioning. The chief executive avoided admitting that Facebook is a publisher or a monopoly, refused to commit to any meaningful legislation and respectfully addressed […]
Daily Archives: April 10, 2018
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) spent her portion of today's epic-length questioning of Mark Zuckerberg getting the CEO to squeeze himself deeper and deeper between a rock and a hard place. He didn't reveal anything particularly damning, but he also — with her help — made himself look ineffective and clueless.
Sen. Harris puts Zuckerberg between a rock and a hard ...
Mark Zuckerberg ran his apology scripts, trotted out his lists of policy fixes and generally dulled the Senate into submission. And that constitutes success for Facebook. Zuckerberg testified before the joint Senate judiciary and commerce committee today, capitalizing on the lack of knowledge of the politicians and their surface-level questions. Half the time, Zuckerberg got […]
Zuckerberg’s boring testimony is a big win for Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially shot down the conspiracy theory that the social network has some way of keeping tabs on its users by tapping into the mics on people’s smartphones. During Zuckerberg’s testimony before the Senate this afternoon, Senator Gary Peters had asked the CEO if the social network is mining audio from mobile […]
Zuckerberg tells Congress Facebook is not listening to you through ...
As Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook testimony stretches on, a rough exchange with Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana produced some of the day’s more memorable sound bites. “Mr. Zuckerberg, I come in peace. I don’t want to vote to have to regulate Facebook, but by God I will,” Sen. Kennedy began his short exchange. “In fact, […]
Sen. Kennedy to Mark Zuckerberg: ‘Your user agreement sucks’
The app permissions that led to 87 million Facebook users' data being harvested and sold to Cambridge Analytica may have also allowed access to those users' inboxes, the company confirmed today. This wasn't achieved by any underhanded means, exactly, but people might not have realized that they were granting permission to read and record their private messages as well as more public data like location and interests.
Cambridge Analytica may have accessed some Facebook users’ messages
While many of us in the tech world are familiar with Facebook’s business model, there is a common misconception among people that Facebook collects information about you and then sells that information to advertisers. Zuckerberg wants everyone (especially the U.S. Senate) to know that’s not the case, and has laid forth the most simple example […]
Mark Zuckerberg: “We do not sell data to advertisers”
Today's testimony by Mark Zuckerberg in front of a Senate joint committee was often boring or redundant with previous statements. But there was an exchange near the two hour mark that was pleasantly refreshing: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) doggedly pursuing a common-sense answer from Zuckerberg on the question of whether it had any real competition.
‘You don’t think you have a monopoly?’ Read Sen. Graham’s ...
In the middle of testimony over Facebook’s privacy scandal, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas took a moment to grill Mark Zuckerberg over his company’s political loyalties. In the course of a testy exchange between Sen. Cruz and Zuckerberg, the senator brought up the dismissal of Palmer Luckey, the controversial founder of virtual reality tech development […]
Palmer Luckey, political martyr?
Shareholders seemed to have incredibly low expectations of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ability to handle a Senate testimony, because Facebook stock climbed 4.5 percent Tuesday with the bulk of the gains coming during his televised testimony. Though the markets closed nearly an hour ago, Zuckerberg is still being peppered by Senators in an hours-long testimony […]