Mark Zuckerberg was put under tough questioning by Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, focusing on the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook’s hesitation to regulate political ads.
During a hearing with the US House financial services committee about Facebook’s new cryptocurrency project, Libra, Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers pressed the Facebook CEO hard.
“In order for us to make decisions about Libra, I think we need to kind of dig into your past behavior and Facebook’s past behavior with respect to our democracy,” said the New York congresswoman before asking when Zuckerberg first became aware of Cambridge Analytica’s activities.
Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders have so far refused to say exactly when they realized the company was gathering and selling user data to sway elections.
Emails from inside Facebook found during a 2019 lawsuit showed executives knew about questionable data collection by Cambridge Analytica as early as September 2015. The Guardian first revealed the firm’s existence in December 2015.
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said he learned about Cambridge Analytica “around the time [the news] became public … around March of 2018.” Ocasio-Cortez then asked if anyone on his leadership team had known about it before The Guardian story came out on December 11, 2015.
“I believe some folks were tracking it internally,” Zuckerberg replied. “I do think I was aware of Cambridge Analytica as an entity earlier, but I don’t know if I was tracking how they were using Facebook specifically.”
Ocasio-Cortez went further asking about Facebook’s policy that allows political ads to skip fact-checking. She questioned whether she could pay for an ad that gave false information about an election date targeted at mainly black neighborhoods.
Zuckerberg explained that Facebook does take down content related to violence or voter suppression but didn’t clarify if outright lies in political ads would be removed.
Just this month, Facebook refused to remove a Trump campaign ad that misleadingly portrayed Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine.
“Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of factchecking on political advertisements?” Ocasio-Cortez asked directly.
She also brought up Zuckerberg’s rumored “dinner parties with far-right figures,” questioning if he addressed claims from conservatives that Facebook censors their speech – a question he sidestepped.
This hearing marked Zuckerberg’s first time testifying before Congress since April 2018 during another session focused on Cambridge Analytica. Throughout Wednesday’s grilling, he admitted that Facebook has made mistakes along the way.
“I get that I’m not the ideal messenger for this right now. We’ve faced a lot of issues over the past few years and I’m sure there are a lot of people who wish it were anyone but Facebook that was helping to propose this,” he said.
