Mark Zuckerberg has just testified to Congress
for the first time in about a year.
On this occasion the hearing in front of the House Financial
Services Committee was ostensibly about Project Libra,
Facebook's attempts to create a new global digital currency.
However, only about half the members of the committee
seem that interested in Project Libra,
despite its potential to upend global monetary systems
and even challenge the dominance of the dollar.
On Libra itself, the Facebook chief
will consider his job relatively well done.
He sounded a note of humility, talking
about if, not when the project would launch,
and also admitting that Facebook was not necessarily the best
message carrier here, given the host
of other political controversies the company faces.
It was when talking about those other political controversies
that the Facebook chief executive came under the most
pressure, however.
On two notable occasions, he came under heavy fire
from Democrats on the committee.
The first of those occasions was when Joyce Beatty
said she was unconvinced by the company's attempts to create
a new civil rights task force.
When told that Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating
officer, would be in charge of that task force,
she said, come better than that for me.
The second occasion was when rising star Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez grilled the Facebook chief
executive on which companies they use to fact
check on the website.
She revealed that one of them was the rightwing website Daily
Caller, which caused Mr Zuckerberg to squirm
visibly in his chair.
Now, this week I want to try something new on the blog.
Each week I'm going to attempt to answer one
of our readers' or viewers' questions.
This week the question is from Ursula Green.
Ursula asks, what exactly can regulators
do to stop Project Libra if they want to?
Well, Ursula, the answer is they don't
have to do anything at all.
Facebook, and now Project Libra, have
said that they will not launch this currency
without the go-ahead from regulators,
both in the US and Europe.
Other companies might choose to launch such a product
and simply challenge regulators to take action against it,
but Facebook and Project Libra have now ruled that out.
So that option isn't open to them.
Thanks very much for the question.
And if anybody would like to ask a question
to be answered in a future blog, please
do so in the comments section below.