Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified for the first time before Congress Tuesday facing lawmakers during a joint hearing of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees.
Senators grilled him on the controversy surrounding Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to President Trump that Facebook says improperly harvested data on as many as 87 million users for political targeting, and other issues facing the platform like Russian election meddling.
It was a make-or-break moment for Zuckerberg with the eyes of the tech and political worlds on the blockbuster hearing.
The Daily Caller reports Sen. Ted Cruz clearly rattled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Tuesday by grilling him about Facebook’s well-documented censorship of conservatives.
Cruz noted the number of examples of Facebook censoring conservatives, including labeling conservative commentators Diamond and Silk as “unsafe,” hiding stories about the IRS targeting conservatives and blocking over two dozen Catholic pages.
To a great many Americans, that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias,” Cruz said. “Do you agree with that assessment?”
Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook’s location in the highly-liberal Silicon Valley could concern conservative users, but assured Cruz that the platform tries to be unbiased.
“Are you aware of any ad or page that has been taken down from Planned Parenthood?” Cruz shot at the tech billionaire.
“Senator, I’m not,” Zuckerberg conceded. “But let me just — ”
“How about MoveOn.org?” Cruz continued.
“I’m not specifically aware of those,” Zuckerberg again admitted.
During nearly five hours of questioning by 44 U.S. senators, Zuckerberg repeated apologies he previously made for a range of problems that have beset Facebook, from a lack of data protection to Russian agents using Facebook to influence U.S. elections.
Reuters reports the 33-year-old internet mogul managed to deflect any specific promises to support any congressional regulation of the world’s largest social media network and other U.S. internet companies.
“I’ll have my team follow up with you so that way we can have this discussion across the different categories where I think this discussion needs to happen,” Zuckerberg told a joint hearing by the U.S. Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary committees, when asked what regulations he thought were necessary.
Investors were impressed with his performance. Shares in Facebook posted their biggest daily gain in nearly two years, closing up 4.5 percent.
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