Thanks Steve, well let's recap day two of Zuckerberg.
During his testimony, lawmakers again pressed Zuckerberg
to define any government legislation that could oversee technology companies.
Zuckerberg denied to provide specific policy ideas.
Let's listen in to what he had to say on that point
I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation.
So my position is not that there should be no regulation,
but I also think that you have to be careful
about what regulation you put in place, for a lot of the reasons that you're saying.
I think a lot of times regulation, by definition, puts in place rules
that a company that is larger, that has resources like ours can easily comply with,
but that might be more difficult for a smaller start-up to comply with.
So, I think these are all things that need to be thought through very carefully.
The Facebook founder also responded to concerns over how
personal information on the world's largest social network is controlled.
This was what he had to say on that.
I think people often ask what the difference is
between surveillance and what we do and I think that the difference is extremely clear,
which is that on Facebook you have control over your information.
The content that you share, you put there.
You can take it down at any time.
The information that we collect, you can choose to have us not collect,
You could delete any of it and of course you can leave Facebook if you want.
I know of no surveillance organization that gives people the option to delete
the data that they have or even know what they're collecting.
And in a heated exchange with California congresswoman Anna Eshoo,
Zuckerberg revealed a personal connection to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
This is what he had to say.
Was your data included in the data sold to the malicious third parties? Your personal data.
Yes.
It was. Are you willing to change your business model in the interest of protecting individual privacy?
Congresswoman, we have made and are continuing to make changes to reduce the amount of data...
No, are you willing to change your business model in the interest of protecting individual privacy?
Congresswoman, I'm not sure what that means
Well, I'll follow up with you on it. When did Facebook learn that Cambridge Analytica's research project
was actually for tight targeted psychographic political campaign work?
Congresswoman, it might be useful to clarify what actually happened here
Well, no, I don't have time for a long answer though.
When did Facebook learn that?
And when you learned it, did you contact their CEO immediately?
And if not, why not?
Congresswoman, yes, when we learned in 2015 that a Cambridge University
researcher associated with the academic institution, that build an app
that people chose to...
We know what happened with them but I'm asking you...
Yes, I'm answering your question.
That was my favourite. I have to say I didn't enjoy much of the Durbin stuff, the Cruz stuff
I thought that, the congresswoman, have really grilled him a little bit there
and that was interesting. "Are you willing to change your business model to protect personal data?"
"Congresswoman, I do not compute," I mean, "I do not get what you say..."
What do you think, Arj?
Yesterday was definitely visibly tougher, he was rattled in a few places,
with some of the questioning from the Congress people there.
And what I think what you saw in the reaction,
the share price this week, it's up nearly six percent this week,
yesterday was up again and the point here is that, look, at the end of all of this,
nothing is really going to change about Facebook's fundamental business model,
which it is advertising and it's using that advertising to target customers,
and I think the market now is realizing that actually, at the end of this
the business model question you just heard there, there was actually no answer
from Zuckerberg really, in him saying we're going to change anything.
They're on the regulation front as well, there was no real sense of any kind of thoughtful
or well developed regulation that actually came out of any of these
hearings or any thinking about that, so I think those were two of the big concerns
and those have really been quiet and down now.