But don’t you dare call it a monopoly!
After initially apologizing and accepting responsibility for failing to protect user data, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared support for some vague form of regulation as 44 senators questioned him during his first congressional testimony.
“My position is not that there should be no regulation,” Zuckerberg said. “I think the real question, as the internet becomes more important in people’s lives, is what is the right regulation?”
Under more direct questioning, the 33-year-old billionaire refused to endorse any specific regulatory proposal. He remained on the defensive, touting his company’s idealistic vision.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked Zuckerberg if he would back legislation to mandate that digital platforms like Facebook obtain affirmative consent from users to collect their data for targeted advertising. Zuckerberg dodged: “In general, I think that principle is exactly right.”
When Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) raised the possibility of the U.S. enacting data protection laws similar to the new rules about to go into effect in the European Union, he dodged again. “It’s certainly worth discussing,” he said.
These kinds of easy dodges were common throughout the hearing. Zuckerberg received numerous questions that revealed simple misunderstandings about what Facebook does and how it works. He answered questions about how the company makes money (“We sell ads”), how much data it collects, whether it sells data, how targeted advertising works and whether it combines data from its many products. It wasn’t clear whether the senators really understood how Facebook worked.