Hate speech, Palantir, Russia ads: What Zuckerberg didn't answer and what he wasn't asked
On April 10, 2018, Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrived in Washington DC to testify in front of the US Congress in connection with the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. In what turned out to be a five-hour long televised grilling of one of the richest – and arguably one of the most powerful – men in the world, Zuckerberg fielded a number of uncomfortable questions.
Before the hearing, he was reportedly given a crash course in "public speaking, humility, and charm" by a team of experts, including a former special assistant to former US president George W Bush. And looks like the crash course worked. Not only did he manage to emerge unscathed after this public examination, his efforts also saw Facebook's shares soar by 4.5 per cent to $165 – their biggest one-day gain in nearly two years.
This increased Facebook's valuation by more than $21 billion and added to Zuckerberg's personal fortune close to $3 billion.
But was this payday a reward for Facebook's newfound honesty, or the result of its CEO tactfully treading the televised minefield? It proved to be the latter.
What Zuckerberg didn't say
Though there is no doubt that Zuckerberg was subjected to a few uncomfortable questions that did catch him off guard once or twice, he remained poised for most part of the "grilling".
Unlike his previous performances, where he has been seen to squirm and sweat under the glare of the camera's lens, Zuckerberg on Tuesday largely appeared in control when he fielded questions from as many as 44 US politicians informally trained in the art of intimidation.
Surrounded by a sea of cameras, shuttering away at the change of every expression on his face, Zuckerberg tactfully evaded – and to some extent was allowed to evade – the odd difficult question thrown at him.
Palantir's links to Facebook
Most notable among these questions was Democrat senator Maria Cantwell's attempts at broadening the scope of the conversation beyond Cambridge Analytica's exploits by questioning Zuckerberg about Palantir – a firm that Facebook board member Peter Thiel co-founded and is now the chairman of.
Cantwell asked: "Do you think Palantir ever scraped data from Facebook?"
Zuckerberg, looking clearly uncomfortable, replied with a meek "Senator, I'm not aware of that".
At this, she went on to ask, "Do you know who Palantir is?"
Zuckerberg admitted that he did, after which she asked if Palantir worked with Cambridge Analytica. Yet again, the Facebook CEO tried to evade by saying he had no information on the subject.
The question about Palantir was one that many have been waiting to ask as the data mining company has been alleged to have direct links to embattled Cambridge Analytica. Last month, the New York Times reported that Palantir and the daughter of the former Google chairman Eric Schmidt had connections to Cambridge Analytica's attempt at scraping data of Facebook users.
About Cambridge Analytica and Russian ads
Another query that Zuckerberg seemed less than willing to address was a direct question by a senator from California, Kamala Harris, on why Facebook didn’t ban Cambridge Analytica or inform users that their data had been stolen by the firm after the social media giant became aware of the leak in 2015.
Put on the spot, Zuckerberg failed to put forth a convincing response: “Knowing what we know now, we should have handled a lot of things here differently... In retrospect, I think we clearly view it as a mistake that we did not inform people."
Harris continued the line of difficult questioning by asking Zuckerberg how much money Facebook had earned from fake Russian ad campaigns. Again, caught off guard, Zuckerberg went on the defensive and said, “What we do know is that the IRA, the Internet Research Agency, the Russian firm, ran about $100,000 worth of ads... I can’t say that we have identified all of the foreign actors who are involved here, so I can’t say that it is all of the money.”
On curbing hate speech
What also came as no surprise was Zuckerberg's reluctance on giving a definitive reply on how Facebook plans to clamp down on the spread of hate speech through its platform. Though Zuckerberg did accept that there was a problem, he fell short of making any commitment to make a Facebook a hate speech-free zone in the immediate future.
In his testimony, he said that there isn't much that Facebook can do on the issue for now. He said he believes that in "five to ten years", AI may play a primary role in automatically detecting hate speech and ridding Facebook of the problem.
"Hate speech – I am optimistic that over a five-to-10-year period we will have AI tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate, to be flagging things to our systems, but today we’re just not there on that,” Zuckerberg said.
“Until we get it automated, there’s a higher error rate than I’m happy with.”
Market monopoly and need for regulation
Another exchange where Zuckerberg chose not to give straight answers was when asked by Republican senator Lindsey Graham if Facebook was operating under monopolistic market conditions and whether there was a need for Facebook and other social media platforms to be brought under the purview of a regulatory framework.
Asked to name a direct competitor of Facebook, Zuckerberg tried to wriggle out of the situation and listed three "categories" of companies, including major tech players like “Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft”.
When pressed further to name one competing product, he stuck to his argument but still failed to name a direct competitor.
Similarly, upon being asked if Facebook needs greater regulation, he tried to steer the debate away from a yes and no situation.
What he wasn't asked
For every question Zuckerberg evaded, there were many that the US senators should have asked, but simply didn't.
In the aftermath of the exposé in March 2018, Facebook's first reaction was to deny each emerging detail. The social media giant even went to the extent of trying to use its muscle to shut down voices involved in unravelling this unprecedented data scandal.
In its efforts, Facebook not only blocked Christopher Wylie, the man responsible for bringing to light this data theft, but also threatened The Guardian and its journalists of legal action in the event the daily did not take its story on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal down.
Many were hoping that Facebook's CEO would be put under the scanner and quizzed on the company's motivation behind these threats and bans. However, none of the 44 senators thought it important to expose the apparent hypocrisy behind Facebook's new found "honesty" and care for its users and their data.
Another bullet that Zuckerberg appears to have dodged is any probe on Facebook's role in watching its users and their web activity even when they are away from it.
Facebook creates in-depth profiles of users by following them across different websites.
Zuckerberg, during the hearing, claimed that the content that users share with the website is owned by them and can be deleted any time.
However, what happens to the data that Facebook collects on users based on their activity on other websites that they log in to using their Facebook credentials?
This question was also raised by Twitter user Alp Ozcelik in a series of tweets.
Interesting distinction to dig into imo: Zuckerberg says that you own the content and data you put onto the site. But what if the company can glean information about you from the actions you take on the site without disclosing anything yourself? What about that data's ownership?
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
It's not data you can take back. It's not content you can remove. It's just data being put together looking at the way you're spending time on Facebook. One would argue that's Facebook's data on you and your habits cause they put it together in the first place.
— Alp Ozcelik (@alplicable) April 10, 2018
No probe over this ad-tracking algorithm called Pixel only helps the Facebook CEO. It made evident the inability/unwillingness of US senators to ask questions that have far-reaching consequences for data privacy.
Questions that need to be asked in order to fix the scandal that Facebook and the authorities find themselves in.