Live updates from Day 2 of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress

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We’re returned for Day 2 of Mark Zuckerberg-fest right here in Washington, D.C. The Facebook CEO is set to testify these days about the organization’s data and privacy rules again, this time earlier than the House Commerce Committee starting at 10 am ET / 7 am PT — if you want to observe stay, you may achieve this here or within the YouTube video above. Yesterday, Zuckerberg testified for greater than five hours in a joint listening to Senate committees and took questions from more than 40 senators. We were in the room and protected the hearing right here.

testimony to Congress

Zuckerberg did well yesterday. He changed into smart, respectful, and benefitted from the truth that a variety of the lawmakers used their time to hold forth or ask questions that weren’t very technical. It turned into a reminder that these things are complex and that Facebook needs to be higher at explaining what it does and why to a more general target market. Not simply tech reporters.

Nine:55 am ET: Day 2! We’re returned to the hearing room these days, this time within the Rayburn House Office Building across the road from the Capitol. It feels plenty smaller than the day gone by. Still, the chaos out of doors the room is identical: Dozens of TV cameras, hundreds of human beings waiting to get into public seating, and lots of law enforcement officials seeking to preserve order. I noticed Facebook’s comms team, such as VP of Public Policy and Global Communications Elliot Schrage, ready in line with the general public to get in. (They made it!)
Here is my view. Nine: fifty-six am ET: Zuckerberg just came in and sat down. A million click-click clicks from the photographers, again like the day before this. You can see how cramped it’s far compared to the day before today.

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10:00 am ET: We began right on time these days. The Chairman of the committee, Rep. Greg Walden, is issuing his opening assertion. It’s what you would assume — he’s concerned about the number of statistics Facebook collects, and the way it’s far used, and the way Facebook conveys those facts to its customers. This room is packed. I am counting fifty-five individuals of the House seat. This will be some other marathon.

10: eleven am ET: Zuckerberg is now analyzing his beginning declaration. It is the identical declaration he studies the previous day to the Senate. You can study it right here.
He asked if Facebook is a media corporation, and Zuckerberg said that Facebook is an era enterprise. (My colleague Peter Kafka believes Facebook is a media organization, and also you must examine this wonderful tale approximately it if you have some time.) 10:16 am ET: The Q&A is starting with Walden.

10:18 am ET: Zuckerberg just said that humans come to considered one of Facebook’s merchandise a hundred billion times in step with the day. That is … Plenty. Zuckerberg is telling Walden that Facebook does not promote consumer statistics, which the agency has now clarified many usually. For a fashionable concept of ways Facebook uses your information for marketing, you must study the explainer Recode just posted this morning.

10:22 am ET: Rep. Frank Pallone is looking for Zuckerberg to answer yes or no questions. The handiest real interesting one is whether Zuckerberg might decide to convert Facebook’s person default settings to reduce facts series “to the best extent feasible.”

Zuckerberg stated it’s miles a “complex difficulty that deserves more than a one-phase solution.”That’s disappointing to me,” Pallone responded. The background here is that Sen. Richard Blumenthal proposed a new bill that might require corporations to have customers opt into all facts series the day before this. Default or maximum corporations are now deciding out, which means the organizations accumulate it until they are informed not to. Obviously, this indicates agencies commonly get lots extra information than they could in any other case.

You can take down your information as an example. 10:31 am ET: Zuckerberg is now seeking to explain to Rep. Bobby Rush why Facebook doesn’t surveil its customers. He says that Facebook gives customers controls over their facts and privacy settings. “I realize of no surveillance corporation that offers human beings the choice to delete the statistics that they have got or even recognize what they’re amassing,” Zuckerberg said.

10:35 am ET: An rising topic here is that everyone realizes Facebook doesn’t certainly have much competition within the social media area. Zuckerberg keeps pronouncing that Americans use an average of 8 distinct apps to “speak and stay linked to humans” — that is his argument for why Facebook is not a monopoly. (He stated that the previous day, too.) But let’s be honest. What app clearly competes with Facebook? Maybe SMS and iMessage on the messaging front. But of those 8 apps, Zuckerberg maintains citing, I marvel how many Facebook owns. Does that consist of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp?

10:forty one am ET: Rep. Anna Eshoo just requested Zuckerberg if he might exchange Facebook’s enterprise model “inside the interest of protecting man or woman privacy.” He responded, “I’m not positive what which means.” This concept that Facebook has to recollect a few forms of business beyond advertising is thrilling. It does now not sound from what Zuckerberg said these days or the previous day that Facebook is severely thinking about something else, like an advert-free subscription model, as an instance. But it’s an intriguing idea. Zuckerberg and Facebook have constantly said that Facebook can and should be unfastened because that’s the fine way to attach everybody globally.

10: forty-eight am ET: “It’s something that we’re searching for.” That changed into Zuckerberg’s reaction to whether or not or no longer Facebook is making plans to sue Cambridge Analytica. 10:50 am ET: We are simplest about forty-five minutes into this element. However, it appears clean Zuckerberg is in for a miles harder grilling than he was given the day before today from contributors of the Senate. The questions this morning have been greater pointed, and there may be clean frustration from the various House individuals right here. Many have asked pointed sure/no questions that Zuckerberg maintains seeking to explain for in greater element.

10:fifty five am ET: Add this to the listing of issues from the week: Facebook gives loads extra privateness and records controls than all of us seem to realize. So many date questions were spoken back with the aid of Zuckerberg with some version of “We already do that.” What’s clear is that lots of humans don’t know what Facebook gives. Facebook obviously needs to do a higher activity conveying to humans what it’s gathering and how they could shield themselves.

Eleven:01 am ET: Rep. Marsha Blackburn likened Facebook’s “community” to “The Truman Show,” in which your lifestyles are shared with humans that you don’t even know are looking. Spooky! Eleven:05 am ET: Blackburn additionally asked Zuckerberg approximately censorship on Facebook, but we didn’t get to listen to tons of a change as she ran out of time. Zuckerberg spoke back that he doesn’t see what Facebook does as censorship; however, there are a few forms of content material, like terrorist content material, that everyone likely has the same opinion need to be taken down. I can’t help but wonder if that censorship query passed off due to this incident from last fall, where a Blackburn marketing campaign ad about “the sale of child body components” become temporarily blocked on Twitter.

testimony to Congress

Journalism is essential, parents! 11:15 am ET: Rep. Mike Doyle is a bit bowled over that Facebook didn’t find out about the Cambridge Analytica statistics trove till it became approached by the click in 2015. “Do you routinely learn about those violations through the clicking?” he requested. “Congressman, on occasion we do.”

Doyle also commented that Facebook became more dependable to its developer companions than it changed into person privateness. I suppose that may be a truthful argument, particularly if you go again to whilst this Cambridge Analytica statistics switch befell in 2013.