Day two of Mark Zuckerberg’s trip to Washington to answer questions in front of Congress is done. First of all, it turns out that Zuckerberg needed a booster seat when he testified yesterday:
https://twitter.com/Chet_Cannon/status/983855132101099520
For the record, Zuckerberg is 5′ 7″. The booster seat was not present today.
Now back to the real issues. Zuckerberg got is butt kicked by Congress because I predicted earlier today, they’re far more tech savvy than the senate. Here are the key takeaways:
- Zuckerberg told Congress that yes, it would roll out GDPR-style protections globally. Sort of. We’ll see in May if that happens.
- When Facebook got into trouble in 2011, they cut a deal with the FTC. As part of that deal, Facebook is required to identify and address emerging threats to user privacy. Many in Congress feel that the deal has been violated.
- Zuckerberg was under pressure to answer questions about how it tracks people around the web and why. He didn’t do a great job of answering them.
- Zuckerberg admitted that own profile was part of the Cambridge Analytica data leak. That’s stunning.
- More members of Congress are pressing Facebook to offer additional privacy protections to minors. Zuckerberg would not commit to that. #Fail
- Zuckerberg got grilled about drug sales on Facebook despite that being against the Facebook terms of service. He claimed that Facebook will do a better job of cracking down on this.
- Legislation is definitely on the table. Largely because they don’t trust Facebook.
So, how did Zuckerberg do? I think he faced a far tougher test today. He stuck to his script, some of which leaked:
https://twitter.com/MrsArboe/status/984123704178368512
Total #EpicFail. Zuckerberg can’t secure his own notes. How can he possibly secure our data?
In any case, I don’t think he did nearly as well despite sticking to his notes, as his testimony was awkward at times. While I didn’t think he hurt Facebook. But he didn’t help his cause by how he performed today. I don’t think he did enough to stop bad things from happening to Facebook. What those bad things are, I have no idea.
Oh yeah, I think that Zuckerberg’s trip to Washington won’t stop people from joining team #DeleteFacebook either.