Zuckerberg goes to Washington: all the updates on Facebook’s reckoning before Congress – The Verge

Reps say ‘we have yet to receive any responses’ to questions from Zuckerberg testimony

2018-04-25T18:13:26-04:00

When Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress earlier this month, he left a lot of questions in his wake. More than 20 times, he responded to Congressional inquiries by saying that he didn't have the information on hand but that his team would follow up with more information after the hearing had closed.

But 13 days after the hearings, congressional democrats on the House Energy and Commerce committee say still they haven't heard anything from Facebook.

"We have yet to receive any responses"

"It's been two weeks since our hearing and we have yet to receive responses to questions that Mr. Zuckerberg could not answer on that day," Rep. Frank …

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AI is an excuse for Facebook to keep messing up

2018-04-13T14:41:02-04:00

Over the course of an accumulated 10 hours spread out over two days of hearings, Mark Zuckerberg dodged question after question by citing the power of artificial intelligence.

Moderating hate speech? AI will fix it. Terrorist content and recruitment? AI again. Fake accounts? AI. Russian misinformation? AI. Racially discriminatory ads? AI. Security? AI.

It's not even entirely clear what Zuckerberg means by "AI" here. He repeatedly brought up how Facebook's detection systems automatically take down 99 percent of "terrorist content" before any kind of flagging. In 2017, Facebook announced that it was "experimenting" with AI to detect language …

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This plan would regulate Facebook without going through Congress

2018-04-12T11:32:40-04:00

After two days of bruising testimony before Congress, there's never been more interest in regulating Facebook. In question after question this week, lawmakers seemed to take it as a given that new rules were needed to rein in Facebook, with proposals like the Markey-Blumenthal CONSENT Act (which would require opt-in consent for all data-sharing), taking center stage. At the same time, Congress doesn't seem likely to act soon; most bills come from the Democratic minority, and both chambers are already settling into gridlock.

In both hearings, Zuckerberg insisted he wasn't opposed to new legal restrictions on the platform, although he demurre …

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7 takeaways from Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before the House

2018-04-11T16:39:47-04:00

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his second of two appearances before Congress on Wednesday, enduring a five-hour session of questions from members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In contrast to their amiably confused counterparts in the Senate, members of the House committee demonstrated a generally better command of how Facebook works and how its efforts to develop richly detailed advertising profiles for billions of people have created privacy concerns around the world.

As with yesterday, Facebook sought to promote steps it has already taken to address the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. But House me …

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Republican lawmakers keep grilling Mark Zuckerberg about ‘censoring’ two conservative vloggers

2018-04-11T12:59:50-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg is facing a lot of questions about Facebook's policies, most of which involve handling user data. But there's a running theme on the Republican side of the aisle: Facebook is censoring conservative content, particularly two pro-Trump vloggers who go by the names Diamond and Silk. Multiple legislators have asked about Lynnette "Diamond" Hardaway and Rochelle "Silk" Richardson, who complained that Facebook was limiting the reach of their videos, and were told their videos were "unsafe to the community." Facebook later told reporters that the email was "inaccurate and not reflective of the way we communicate with our community," …

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Congressman presses Zuckerberg on Facebook’s poor diversity record

2018-04-11T12:46:34-04:00

In today's hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) decided to take the opportunity to press Mark Zuckerberg on the subject of racial diversity in Silicon Valley.

After rebuking him for the Cambridge Analytica data leak, he changed the topic. "I want to go in a different direction today," he said, with a sudden shift in tone. "You and your team know how I feel about racial diversity in corporate America, and Sheryl Sandberg and I talk about that all the time."

Butterfield noted that although Facebook had "increased black representation from 2 to 3 percent" in the last year, "This does not meet …

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Zuckerberg says Facebook will extend European data protections worldwide — kind of

2018-04-11T11:58:11-04:00

In today's hearing before the House Committee on Commerce and Energy, Mark Zuckerberg stated that the changes Facebook is making in response to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be available worldwide. Zuckerberg made a commitment to not only provide the same privacy controls but making the same kinds of disclosures and treating users' data the same. The GDPR imposes requirements on how user data is collected, and how user data must be deleted at the user's request. However, only moments after giving a clear yes, he seemed to equivocate yet again.

"Facebook has committed to abiding by [the GDPR] in Europe a …

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Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Facebook profile was part of the Cambridge Analytica leak

2018-04-11T11:08:33-04:00

For weeks, Facebook has been struggling with the fallout from a third-party app that leaked 87 million Facebook profiles to the campaign firm Cambridge Analytica - but speaking to a House committee today, Zuckerberg revealed a new personal connection to the breach. Apparently, Zuckerberg himself was one of the many Facebook profiles collected through the app.

The revelation came as part of a string of yes-or-no questions from Rep. Anna Eschoo (D-CA), who encouraged Facebook to adopt a more serious approach to data privacy. "Was your data included in the data sold to malicious third parties?" Eshoo asked. "Your personal data?"

"Yes," Zucker …

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Here’s how much Facebook donated to every lawmaker questioning Mark Zuckerberg this week

2018-04-11T09:00:28-04:00

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce today, fresh off the heels of a grueling five-hour joint session before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees yesterday. In total, Zuckerberg will face questions from nearly 100 legislators, and many of those legislators have received thousands of dollars from the company Zuckerberg runs.

Over the last 12 years, Facebook has spent $7 million in campaign contributions. Historically, Facebook has donated slightly more to Democrats than Republicans, but overall, the platform's political footprint is small in Washington, DC relative t …

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Watch Zuckerberg testify before Congress, day 2: start time and live stream

2018-04-11T06:58:28-04:00

After yesterday's seemingly endless marathon hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, today Mark Zuckerberg heads to the House, where he'll be answering questions in front of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Yesterday's session featured almost 50 legislators peppering Zuckerberg with queries about how Facebook safeguards user data, details on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and even questions about what kind of regulations Zuckerberg believes should be put in place to regulate Facebook.

The day ended with a number of revelations: Zuckerberg said that Facebook "doesn't …

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