With Facebook under election scrutiny, Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
WASHINGTON DC — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ended his first day of testimony before Congress with a big smile, after surviving tough questions from lawmakers in Washington DC Tuesday.
Facebook shares are now up by nearly 5 percent, after he spoke about the steps his company is taking to fix privacy and political concerns that scared aways investors.
Facebook shares dropped steeply after it came to light that 87 million users’ personal information was allegedly stolen by Cambridge Analytica to help President Donald Trump’s election campaign.
“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,” said Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg says it’s now clear to him that Facebook did not do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm — such as the proliferation of fake news, foreign interference in elections and hate speech.
“It’s not enough to just give people a voice, we need to make sure that people aren’t using it to harm other people or to spread misinformation, it’s not enough to just give people control over their information, we need to make sure that the developers they share.”
Among the 2.2 billion Facebook users today, about 36 million are from the Philippines according to Statista.
Information from about a million Filipino Facebook users were reportedly harvested by Cambridge Analytica for the 2016 US elections.
Zuckerberg said he has confidence that Facebook will protect the integrity of elections around the world in 2018, with improved techniques to prevent outside interference.
Meanwhile, the Facebook CEO continued with his second day of testimonies at the US Congress, this time, before the House energy and commerce committee.
Only few from Congress understand what FB all about.The Democrats asked better questions than the out of touch GOPs. Ted Cruz recipient of Cambridge Analytica (CA), asked the best questions like “what is the political affiliations of your staff. Zuckerberg answered that his Company is located at Silicon Valley so most of his workers have leftist belief. FB senior officers are 12 ex-Obama and 12 ex-Hillary employees.. Sen TED CRUZ used CA during the Primary but failed to bring down TRUMP, Digital Guru. This is a big publicity for Zuckerberg, you can watch his brilliance in answering questions,remember he is not under oath so he will say YES now to fix it, then NO tomorrow. If Hillary should have won the election, Zuckerberg should not be appearing at the Congress, and Democrat blamed him for Hillary’s defeat.Cambridge Analytica a British Company said they are a legit company and denies that they hacked FB datas…..