Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg pulled off a smooth appearance
in a joint Senate hearing today, dodging most questions while maintaining an
adequately patient vibe through five hours of varied but mostly tame
questioning.
The chief executive
avoided admitting that Facebook is a publisher or a monopoly, refused to commit
to any meaningful legislation and respectfully addressed lawmakers over a
nearly five hour marathon testimony.
Still, he did make one
rookie mistake.
Zuckerberg left his
hearing notes open in front of his seat for long enough for AP Photographer
Andrew Harnik to snap a high resolution shot with talking points in plain view.
Twitter users and journalists scanning photos from the courtroom as they hit
the wire were quick to notice, the irony of the minor privacy invasion not lost
on them.
Most of the notes
cover points that we heard Zuckerberg repeat during the course of the hearing,
but there are a few more candid statements that didn’t come up. The notes also
provide a glimpse into what lines of questioning Facebook expected. For one,
they expected Congress might demand his resignation.
Below we’ve listed the
subheadings on his notes in bold with any interesting bullet points pulled out.
Our partial transcript retains the original emphasis from the document.
Though we’ve italicized what was underlined, bold lettering is retained.
Compensation
Reverse lookup (scraping)
Accountability
·
Do you ever fire anyone? Yes; hold people accountable all the time; not going into
specifics.
·
Resign? Founded Facebook. My
decisions. I made mistakes. Big challenge, but we’ve solved problems before,
going to solve this one. Already taking action.
·
No accountability for MZ? Accountable to you, to employees, to people who use FB.
Data Safety
·
I use FB every day, so does my family, invest a lot in security.
Business Model (ads)
·
Want FB to be a service that everyone can use, has to be free,
can only do that with ads.
·
Let’s be clear. Facebook doesn’t sell data. You own your
information. We give you controls.
???/ wellbeing
·
Time spent fell 5% Q4, pivot to MSI.
Defend Facebook
·
[If attacked: Respectfully, I reject that. Not who we are.]
Tim Cook on biz model
·
At FB, we try hard to charge you less. In fact, we’re free.
·
On data, we’re similar. When you install an app on your iPhone,
you give it access to some information, just like when you login with FB.
·
Lots of stories about apps misusing Apple data, never seen Apple
notifying people.
·
Important you hold everyone to the same standard.
Disturbing content
Election integrity (Russia )
Diversity
·
Silicon Valley has a problem, and
Facebook is part of that problem.
·
Personally care about making progress; long way to go [3%
African American, 5% Hispanics]
Competition
·
Consumer choice: consumers have lots of choices over how they
spend their time.
·
Small part of ad market: advertisers have choices too – $650 billion
market, we have 6%
·
Break up FB? US tech companies key
asset for America ;
break up strengthens Chinese companies.
GDPR (Don’t say we already do
what GDPR requires)
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