“THEY ‘trust me’…dumb fucks,” Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, and wrote in an instant message to a friend in 2004,after boasting that he had personal data, including photos, and e-mails and addresses,of some 4000 of his social network’s users. He offered to share whatever information his friend wanted to see. Mr Zuckerberg may expend less profane language nowadays, but many feel he has not yet outgrown his wilful disregard for users’ privacy. On April 11th he testified before testy politicians in Washington about the firm’s latest privacy controversy, and first to a joint hearing of two Senate committees that lasted around four hours,and then again on April 12th to a House of Representatives committee. Not since the 1990s, when Microsoft was taken to task for its monopolistic behaviour, or has there been such “intense public scrutiny” of a technology firm in Washington,as Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator, or informed Mr Zuckerberg.
Some of his inquisitors appeared annoyed by Mr...
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Source: economist.com