Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is sorry, but is he ready to answer every tough question?
“It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here.”
This is Mark Zuckerberg, the 33-year-old CEO of Facebook — a billionaire, and whether he believes it or not, a power-broker who rules over an e-nation of more than 2.2 billion people — giving a prepared testimony ahead of his two Senate hearings; the first in front of a joint session of Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the second (scheduled for April 11) before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Facebook and its young CEO have been in the eye of the storm for quite some time now. What with Russian bots influencing elections, private user data getting leaked and also being used for targeting propaganda and the free flow of fake news on his website, it is a moment of reckoning for the young tech leader.
But Zuckerberg’s prepared testimony, in which he takes responsibility for a lot of what has happened, in which he tries to emphasise how much Facebook is working towards undoing its “errors”, and in which he promises more transparency, is not going to be enough.
His statement ends with “I realise the issues we're talking about today aren't just issues for Facebook and our community — they're challenges for all of us as Americans. Thank you for having me here today, and I'm ready to take your questions.”
But is he ready to take those tough questions?
After all, not only are these questions going to be tough, they are also something Zuckerberg does not excel at. This is, after all, not a closed door meeting where he can dominate, where he’s not the top dog. Nor is he going to have PR teams to cherrypick the easier questions for him.
After all, as The Guardian noted “Congress is theatre” and that “they are going to want to inflict pain. They are going to want to be seen as being responsive to public disgruntlement with how Facebook handled the issue”. Laurie Segall of CNN also points out that Zuckerberg's “public appearances are rare, often done in a studio set up inside Facebook where he can address his users in a comfortable environment and with help from a script”. But this is not the case.
More than Zuckerberg’s propensity to sweat, and more than his obvious discomfort in front of a large (somewhat hostile) audience, what is going to be tough for the social media baron is the slew of questions the senate might subject him to.
The first, and perhaps the most basic is just how much of this cavalcade of fiascos is actively Facebook’s fault, not merely because of negligence or ill-made decisions, but because of its active complicity. In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica exposé, it has become abundantly clear that not only did Facebook not take adequate steps to safeguard private user data, but also the kind of (and the amount of) information Facebook has been collecting from everyone, banking on the ignorance of users and a purposely lengthy and tedious “Terms & Conditions” page that is decidedly vague, and meant to discourage one from reading too much into what the real cost of this “free” website is.
All of this has been happening under the charge of Zuckerberg, who apart from being CEO of the public company is also the majority shareholder, making him the literal ruler of his domain.
This further begs another important question that Zuckerberg should ideally face. Is Zuckerberg the right person to lead the charge? Of course, he has no plans to resign, at least for the time being. Speaking to The Atlantic, Zuckerberg, when asked about considering resignation, said, “No, I mean — I am — I do work on philanthropy too, separately. But, these issues are very important,” he said. “We’ve also worked on a lot of hard problems over the last 14 years building Facebook. I mean, it started in a dorm room and now it’s this unprecedented community in scale and I’m very confident that we're gonna [sic] be able to work through these issues.”
But perhaps the most dreaded (and relevant) question is one that pertains to Facebook’s data and how it is used for advertisement. In his testimony, Zuckerberg said, “I want to be clear about what our priority is: protecting our community is more important than maximising our profits.”
He added, “From now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be authorized. To get authorised, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location. Any advertiser who doesn't pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We're starting this in the US and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months.”
What this does not, however, mention — and perhaps he chooses not to — is that he has also vowed “not to change Facebook’s business model.” According to Financial Times, profits from targeted advertising last year generated $16 billion in net income. A Bloomberg report estimated that 75 per cent of Facebook's millions of advertisers are direct response advertisers and small-to-medium-sized companies.
It is unlikely that Facebook is ever going to make changes in its business model without incurring serious financial setbacks, which begs one to consider if Facebook’s behaviour will ever change.
A deeper look into this ad-revenue model too is unlikely to be good news for Facebook. Because should irregularities pop out — and they just might — the potential for regulatory laws would lurk in the background, a move that has already taken shape in Europe. Starting May, the General Data Protection Regulation will take effect in Europe. This significant regulation passed in 2016 requires any company that collects personal data about a citizen of the European Union to get that person’s explicit and informed consent.
It also requires companies to let people revoke their consent and to request all data the company has collected about them.
Zuckerberg believes that Facebook is an idealistic company with an optimistic approach. But this no longer matters. What will matter is whether he can make the Congress trust him.