Zuckerberg under Fire

Facebook founder and chairman Mark Zuckerberg has been in some deep water over the past month over the recent Facebook controversy.

The controversy stemmed from the political analysis firm Cambridge Analytica acquiring data from millions of Facebook users’ data and using it to build voter profiles for the Trump campaign. Quickly after this came out, the criticism began and led to Mark Zuckerberg agreeing to testify in front of Congress.

“I don’t know.  It freaks me out because it’s all about privacy,” senior Sasha Boehm said.

On 10 April, Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing began and extended into a second hearing the next day. The total amount of time Zuckerberg spent in hearings was nearly 10 hours, with Zuckerberg receiving questions from nearly 100 US lawmakers. Throughout these hearings, Zuckerberg repeatedly apologized for the lack of responsibility on his and his company’s behalf, and he promised he and his team were working to fix the issues. The committee proceeded to further criticize Zuckerberg and his mistakes, some taking issues with Facebook’s terms of service

“Your user agreement sucks.  It’s not to inform your users about their rights. I’m going to suggest to you that you go back home and rewrite it,” Republican senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said.

Throughout the hearing, Zuckerberg argued Facebook was a tech company rather than a media company, stating that, while they are responsible for the content on the site, they don’t always create it. Facebook has had a history with a lack of proper content policing, with them landing in hot water for it just last year.

“We’ve seen the apology tours before.  My reservation about your testimony today is I don’t see how you can change your business model unless there are specific rules of the road…. enforced by an outside agency,” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said.

Zuckerberg was open to hearing more talk about regulations on Facebook.