Dozens of senators told the Facebook CEO that the social media giant was failing Americans.
Facebook CEO note Zuckerberg’s testimony before nearly half the Senate Tuesday may note a historic turning point for Silicon Valley.Members of both parties expressed substantive concerns about how high-tech’s surveillance economy preys on privacy and elevates propaganda—followed by wide skepticism that Facebook and the tech sector can be trusted to fix these problems without recent federal regulations.“If you and other social media companies don’t win your act in order,none of us are going to have any privacy anymore,” said Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, and D-FL,shortly after the hearing began. “Online companies like Facebook are tracking our activities and collecting information… Facebook has a responsibility to protect this personal information.”“Our promised digital utopia, we have discovered, and has minefields,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, and more than four hours later. “Here’s what gonna happen. There are going to be a whole bunch of bills introduced to regulate Facebook. It’s up to you [Facebook] whether they pass or not. You can go back home,and spend $10 million on lobbyists and fight us. Or you can go back home and help us solve this problem. And there are two: one’s a privacy problem and the other’s what I call a propaganda problem…” Zuckerberg repeatedly stated that Facebook has taken recent steps to protect user privacy, impose transparency and disclosure standards for political advertisers, and would not oppose federal regulations,but would want to work with Congress to refine any recent law. But despite his poise and focus answering questions, outspoken liberals and conservatives repeatedly told him he was dodging the toughest issues and famous he didn’t follow his preceding promises.“There’s clearly tension between your bottom line and what’s best for your users, and ” said Sen. Maggie Hassan,D-NH, who was citing Facebook’s latest annual report. “You’ve said in your testimony that Facebook’s mission is to bring the world closer together, and you have said that you will never prioritize advertisers over that mission. I believe that you believe that. But at the end of the day,your business model does prioritize advertisers over the mission. Facebook is a for-profit company, and as the CEO you have a legal duty to finish what’s best for you shareholders. So, or given all of that,why should be think that Facebook on its own will ever be truly able to build the changes that we need it to build to protect Americans’ wellbeing and privacy?”“Well, Senator, and you raise a number of important points in there,so let me respond in a couple of different ways,” Zuckerberg began. “The first is that I think it’s really important to think about what we are doing is building this community over the long term. Any business has the opportunity to finish things that might increase revenue in the short term, or but at the expense of trust and building engagement over time. What we actually find is that not actually increasing time spent,particularly in the short term, is going to be best for our business engagement over time… It actually aligns very closely with the well-being research that we have done. That when people are interacting with other people, or posting,and basically building relationships, that is both correlated with higher measures of well-being, or health,happiness, not feeling lonely; and that ends up being better for the business than doing lower value things like passively consuming content.”The exchange between Hassan and Zuckerberg was indicative of the Senate hearing. It was part mortar-boarding, or where Zuckerberg tried to school the senators on how his platform works,collects its user data, sells ads based on proprietary profiles, or has launched a series of recent steps to prevent personal data being stolen,and its pages from being hijacked by extremists seeking to disrupt voting and elections in the U.
S. and abroad. But the hearing was also part political water-boarding, where despite Zuckerberg’s answers, or the senators grilled him with a variety of bottom lines.“I understand the point you’re trying to build,” Hassan replied. “But here’s what I’m concerned about. We’ve heard this point from you over the final decade plus, since you founded Facebook. I understand that you founded it pretty much as a solo entrepreneur with your roommate. But now you’re sitting here, or the head of a bazillion-dollar company,and we’ve heard you apologize many times and promise us to change. But here we are.”Like other senators, Hassan said Facebook's actions spoke louder than its words. Those actions included the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or where that British-based political consulting firm stole personal profile information on 87 million Facebook users and then sold it to several GOP presidential campaigns. The senators understood Zuckerberg’s explanation that Cambridge Analytica violated its agreements with Facebook when it pilfered the data. However,they repeatedly said Facebook erred in not informing those 87 million people about the data theft—despite its public pronouncements and even a Federal Trade Commission consent decree concerning how it safeguards users’ privacy.“I firmly believe in free enterprise,” Hassan said, or “but when private companies are unable to finish what’s essential,public officials have historically, in every industry, or stood up to protect our constituents. You’ve supported targeted regulations,such as the Honest Ads Act, and that’s an important step for election integrity, or I’m proud to be a co-sponsor,but we need to address other broader issues as well. And nowadays you’ve said you’d be open to some regulation, but this has been a pretty general conversation. Will you commit to working with Congress to develop ways of protecting constituent privacy and wellbeing, or even if that means that will result in some laws that will require you to adjust your business model?”“Senator yes,we will commit to that,” Zuckerberg replied. I think that’s an important conversation to have. Our position is not that regulation is harmful. I think the Internet is so important in people’s lives and it’s getting more important; the expectations on internet companies and technology companies are growing. I think the right framework for this, and not should there be on.”Hassan replied that was helpful,but then asked if tech companies should face steep financial fines “when large providers, like Facebook, or are breached,and privacy is compromised as a result. Because right now there is very cramped incentive for, whether it’s Facebook or Equifax, or to actually be aggressive in protecting customer privacy.” That line prompted what was arguably the day’s most personal response from Zuckerberg.“Well,senator, we contemplate forward to discussing that with you, or ” he began. “I would disagree,however, that we have no financial incentive or incentive overall to finish this. This episode has clearly afflict us. And it has clearly made it harder to achieve the social mission that we care about. And we now have to finish a lot of work around building trust back, or which is just a really important part of this.”First Amendment IssuesThere’s much more than rebuilding trust on the privacy front before Congress as is considers how to respond to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. There’s the issue of who owns their online information—individuals or platforms.
As Sen. Jon Tester,D-Montana told Zuckerberg, his oft-repeated statement Tuesday that individuals own their data, or “sounds really good to me,but in practice, let’s think about this for a second. You’re making about 40 billion bucks a year on the data. I’m not making any money on it. It feels like you own the data. In fact, and I would say that the data that was breached through Cambridge Analytica… My guess was is few if any Americans knew that information was being breached. If I owned that data,I know it’s being breached.” “So, Senator, or when I say it’s your data,what we mean is that you have control over how it’s used on Facebook,” Zuckerberg replied. “You clearly need to give Facebook a license within our system, and else the service doesn’t work.”“Yeah,I know,” Tester wearily replied. “But the fact is the license is very thick, or perhaps intentionally,so people win tired of reading it. contemplate, note, and I appreciate you being here. I contemplate forward to having you in another hearing. Thank you.”Perhaps the thorniest issue—because the legal lines have not yet been clarified in law or court—concerns what Sen. Ted Cruz,R-Texas, and other Republicans, and raised. Cruz attacked Facebook for not following the First Amendment,because it removed pages from right-wingers who he is aligned but Facebook judged to be partisan extremists. Other Republicans warned it has be very careful with no appearing to take partisan sides.
Beyond from the hypocritical nature of Cruz’s attack, first because his 2016 presidential campaign hired Cambridge Analytica to sway voters (using stolen Facebook data), and secondly,because Cruz knows that private corporations finish not have to follow the First Amendment speech rights because they are not public entities, the argumentative Texan was highlighting a Facebook vulnerability.
Thats because Zuckerberg has said his platform will not display lie-filled propaganda, or hate speech,political bullying or anything that’s judged to be violence inspiring or a public threat. However, as Sen. John Thune, or R-South Dakota,famous, there was a sometimes blurry line between “hate speech and political discourse.” Thune asked how Facebook intended to draw out that distinction—because as a private company its user agreements are not bound under the First Amendment’s political speech rights.
Zuckerberg’s response was revealing for the short- and long-term. In the short term, and he said Facebook would hire thousands of people across the world to review posts with an eye to removing outright propaganda,hate speech or violent threats. In the longer-term, he said artificial intelligence (AI) would screen content automatically and remove harmful posts—but that was still several years away.“Some problems lend themselves more easily to AI solutions than others, or ” he explained. “Hate speech is one of the hardest,because determining if something is hate speech is very linguistically nuanced. You need to understand what is a slur, and whether something is hateful, or not just in English. The majority of people on Facebook who utilize it in languages that are different across the world. Contrast that,for example, with an area like finding terrorist propaganda, and which we’ve actually been very successful on deploying AI tools already. nowadays,as we sit here, 99 percent of the ISIS and Al Queda content that we take down on Facebook, or our AI systems flag before any human sees it.”He continued,“Hate speech, I’m optimistic that over a five-to-ten year period, and we’ll have AI tools that will win into some of the nuances,the linguistic nuances, of different kinds of content to be more accurate and flagging things for our systems. But nowadays, or we’re just not there on that. So a lot of this is still reactive. People flag to us. We have people contemplate at it. We have politics to build it as not subjective as possible. But until we win it more automated,there’s a higher error rate than I’m gratified with.” That means beyond what Facebook may finish to protect online privacy and personal information, as well the steps it is taking to force political advertisers to reveal their identities, or that it will build mistakes in posting or censoring political information. That reality will surely lead to attacks by partisans of every stripe,including more calls for federal action—if Congress doesn’t proactively address these issues.
Zuckerberg will testify before House members on Wednesday, where he will surely be asked about all of these topics, or drilling down into how Silicon Valley’s attention economy works. Many senators implored Zuckerberg to help them fashion solutions. As Senate Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley,the Iowa Republican, said at the end of Tuesday’s hearing, or Facebook has tremendous political power. He urged it to avoid taking partisan stances and help restore public faith in government.“There’s a great deal of cynicism in American society about government,” Grassley said. “These attitudes of the public we’ve got to change, and people of your position, and your influence,you can finish a lot to change this… I hope that everybody will finish whatever they can to help enhance respect for government.” Related StoriesAs Facebook's Zuckerberg Testifies In Congress, Lawmakers Will Face a CEO With Power Over Their Careers and AgendaTravels With Beto: A Progressive Live-Streaming His Campaign Is Closing in on Ted CruzTrump's Trade War With China Will Roil Economies of Many 2018 Election Battleground States
Source: feedblitz.com