Mark Zuckerberg For The First Time Testifies Before Congress In The Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, made his highly anticipated appearance before Congress in relation the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. The hearing ran through for five-long-hours before a joint-session of the Commerce and Judiciary committees.

During his hearing before the Congress, Zuckerberg was calm, composed and level-headed while answering the questions put out by 42 Senators. Over the course of his hearing, there were multiple instances when the tech mogul said “sorry” for the privacy breach.

Here are some of the sorry statements made by Mark Zuckerberg when asked about different things like him holding a monopoly in the market, whether or not their team knew about the data breach in the past, will Zuckerberg consider for a paid version of Facebook and a lot more.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. And it was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

“When we heard back from Cambridge Analytica that they had told us that they weren’t using the data and deleted it, we considered it a closed case. In retrospect, that was clearly a mistake. We shouldn’t have taken their word for it. We’ve updated our policy to make sure we don’t make that mistake again.”

Even though Zuckerberg appologised a lot in the hearing, there was one remarkable thing about him that stood out the most, the composure he had while answering the questions. This can be considered almost remarkable since this was the first time when the Facebook CEO was undergoing a congressional hearing after avoiding such scrutiny for years.

When asked about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US elections majorly through Facebook, Zuckerberg called it one of this “biggest regrets” and added, “One of my top priorities in 2018 is getting this right.” He also announced that his company is working with special counsel Robert Muller in the federal probe of Russian interference in the last presidential elections.

Mark was also asked about his plans to improve the moderation tools, to which he gave the same answer as always – Artificial Intelligence (AI). Zuckerberg invoked the promise of AI to help Facebook quickly sort through hate speech and other problematic posts. It certainly seems possible that AI will improve Facebook’s content moderation efforts, but it remains unproven.

In case you don’t know about the Cambridge Analytica Facebook Scandal, here’s a video:

However, when someone of Mark Zuckerberg’s stature goes through something grueling as this, memes are the most feasible result to it. And, so it happened. Soon people started examining the details of the hearing, from Zuckerberg’s use of booster seat to how at times in the hearing, Zuckerberg looked anything but a human when faced by the Senators. Check out some of the hilarious memes from the hearing over here:

While Mark Zuckerberg brilliantly handled the Tuesday hearing (April 10th), he’s scheduled for another one on Wednesday morning (April 11th) with the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Jyotsna Amla