Disagree. Several controversial questions were dodged by saying his team would follow up. While it's attractive to paint politicians as incompetent buffoons, let's not forget each of them has their own staff and understands what it means to delegate to your staff and not have answers immediately on hand that only a staff expert would understand.
I'm pretty sure both of you are correct. There was a large amount of tech illiteracy on display but, at the same time, Mark dodged TONS of questions and spoke indirectly like a professional.
That entire testimony was very unsatisfying, in my opinion.
Regardless of the technical literacy of the individuals, they need to ask questions that their constituents will want to know they asked. They are covering their bases so that the media can't play a "Gotcha!" game and say "You were representing the people of the Great State of $YOUR_STATE_HERE, and you didn't even ask Facebook why they invite hackers into their own systems?!". This would look bad for the politician if, by some crazy happenstance, the bug bounty becomes implicated in the boogeyman of the big bad "Russian hackers".
While I don't discount the possibility that many such lines of questioning were borne out of sincere ignorance, the public perception is what matters, regardless of individual competence, knowledge, or ability.
These committee events are just exhibitions to allow politicians to score points back home. Any real work will be done by grossly overpaid lobbyists writing policy that benefits their clients, and grossly underpaid Congressional staffers just trying to work it through the session while protecting Their Guy from potential damage/backlash.
>>That entire testimony was very unsatisfying, in my opinion.
The goal was not satisfaction. The goal was to allow the Senators to be able to tell their constituents they did something about the Facebook problem, to the vast majority of whom "Congressional hearing" will sound serious and consequential.
edit: The downvotes tell me that most people don't understand how these committees work. Here's a hint: they have no teeth. Nothing will happen as a result of this hearing.
It’s all done for the media, soundbites, constituent communications, and fundraising. I once worked for the energy and commerce committee, and it’s a total crap show.
If you're receiving questions that weren't published prior to the interview it's perfectly understandable that not all questions can be answered immediately. In fact, I'd be more suspicious if he answered everything without needing to follow up. If however you're the one raising a question, I think it's your responsibility to ensure that you or someone on your team someone does some basic research and due diligence beforehand.
Saying that oh look it's okay they're not incompetent, it's just they just delegated to people who were incompetent doesn't make it any better.
> If you're receiving questions that weren't published prior to the interview it's perfectly understandable that not all questions can be answered immediately. In fact, I'd be more suspicious if he answered everything without needing to follow up.
Right so I'm not expecting him to answer _every_ question without referring to his staff. There were, however, key controversial questions which he did not answer by claiming he didn't know something immediately.
> If however you're the one raising a question, I think it's your responsibility to ensure that you or someone on your team someone does some basic research and due diligence beforehand.
Zuck was brought in front of the committee to discuss troubling behavior and troubling allegations. While you don't want to ask a nonsensical question, I don't think there's a requirement to be very informed about the subject matter. A number of questions by the committee seemed exploratory or seemed to be simply looking to clarify some rumor/allegation, some were indeed technically misinformed or misunderstood questions, but by and large a lot of the questions that were asked were competent and necessary.
> There were, however, key controversial questions which he did not answer
Can you give some examples please? Having not watched much of this live, nor read the paraphrased feed, I'm interested to know what controversial areas you think were dodged.
- Roger Wicker asks whether Facebook can track browsing activity even when a user is logged out of Facebook. Zuckerberg responds that he's not aware and he'll have his staff follow up, then later admits that cookies exist. They obviously do track this, as stated in their documentation: https://www.facebook.com/help/186325668085084
- John Cornyn asks whether all of a user's data is deleted when their account is deleted. Zuckerberg says, "We should delete all your information." Cornyn: "Should, or do??". Zuckerberg: "We do".
- Later on, Cory Gardner reads parts of Facebook's terms of service stating that backup copies of data may persist for some time after an account has been deleted. Zuckerberg pulls the old, "I'm not sure how it works, I'll have my team follow up". He really seems to want to avoid saying outright that 100% of your data is deleted, because it isn't, "log records" (open to broad definition) are only somewhat anonymized: https://www.facebook.com/help/125338004213029
- Gardner also asks whether Zuckerberg thinks users are aware that they are tracked every time they are logged in in another tab and visit a website with a Like button on it. Zuckerberg says, he thinks people are aware, they should be able to infer that from the context we show them about their friends liking the page.
- During questioning by Sheldon Whitehouse, Zuckerberg says users can download all data Facebook has about them. This is false. The "download your data" button only gives you data from your direct interaction with Facebook, and definitely does not include the sites they've tracked you on around the Internet.
Not sure whether any of these dodges bordering on lies could be prosecuted for lying to Congress, but sure would be interesting to see that tried.
Thanks. Very insightful. Hopefully UK parliament will pick up on his obfuscation and prevarication when they interview the CTO. For what it’s worth, I don’t think MZ was straight up today - and as legislators realize that, it makes it more likely FB will be broken up. If not by the US, then because the EU will force it. I’m seriously unimpressed that MZ has not grasped his situation.
Yep. The amount of "my staff will follow up" was on par with Sessions' "do not recall" statements.
The fact that they called Zuck out on "what hotel did you stay at last night" and "if you messaged any friends in the last week, can you please share the first names of the people you messaged in the last week?"
and Zuck: "no I will not share that publicly"
Senator: "Well, thats the reason why we are here, isn't it?"
Appearing incompetent usually happens because they are actually incompetent.
The fact that they were prepared with these questions only makes the matter worse with the majority being irrelevant and aimless shots in the dark. They are the designated lawmakers with the power here, they absolutely need to do a better job.
Both politicians and Facebook have different incentives.
Facebook has to stay competitive and work with realities with the world. Politicians are paid from taxpayer money and don't have to pay for their decisions.
Politicians are not stupid. They can hire smart tech people to ask smart questions but it does not matter to them. Ted Cruz will still keep his job even if he asks stupid questions. Marc on other hand lose billions of dollars if he makes stupid decisions.
The politicians there do not care about privacy or you and me. That is just pretence. All they care about is how they can benefit from Facebook's $$$$. How can they use Facebook's success to gain more power.
Most of these politicians support unauthorised searches and snooping. These hearings are all farce and I hope Zuck comes out as a winner.
