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we face a number of important issues around privacy safety and democracy and you will rightfully have some hard questions for me to answer before I talk about the steps we're taking to address them I want to talk about how we got here Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company for most of our existence we focused on all the good that connecting people can do and as Facebook has grown people everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool for staying connected to the people they love for making their voices heard and for building communities and businesses just recently we've seen the me2 movement and the March for our lives organized at least in part on Facebook after hurricane Harvey people came together to raise more than 20 million dollars for relief and more than 70 million biz small businesses use Facebook to create jobs and grow but it's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well and that goes for fake news foreign interference and elections and hate speech as well as developers and data privacy we didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a big mistake and it was my mistake and I'm sorry I started Facebook I run it and I'm responsible for what happens here after more than a decade of promises to do better how is today's apology different and why should we trust Facebook to make the necessary changes to ensure user privacy and give people a clearer picture of your privacy policies Thank You mr. chairman so we have made a lot of mistakes in running the company I think it's it's pretty much impossible I believe to start a company in your dorm room and then grow it to be at the scale that we're at now without making some mistakes and because our service is about helping people connect and information those mistakes have been different in how they we try not to make the same mistake multiple times but in general a lot of the mistakes are around how people connect to each other just because of the nature of the search overall I would say that we're going through a broader philosophical shift in how we approach our responsibility as a company for the first 10 or 12 years of the company I viewed our responsibility as primarily building tools that if we could put those tools in people's hands then that would empower people to do good things what I think we've learned now across a number of issues not just data privacy but also fake news and foreign interference and elections is that we need to take a more proactive role in a broader view of our responsibility it's not enough to just build tools we need to make sure that they're used for good and that means that we need to now take a more active view in policing the ecosystem and in watching and kind of looking out and making sure that all of the members in our community are using these tools in a way that's gonna be good and healthy so at the end of the day this is going to be something where people will measure us by our results on this it's not that I expect that anything I say here today to necessarily change people's view but I'm committed to getting this right and I believe that over the coming years once we fully work all these solutions through people will see real real differences Facebook's been served as subpoenas for the special counselor's office is that correct yes if you were anyone at Facebook but interviewed by the special counsels office yes have you been interviewed I have not I have not others have I believe so and I want to be careful here because that our work with the special counsel is confidential and I want to make sure that in an open session I'm not revealing something that's confidential who's there there's one made clear that you have been contacted you have actually let me clarify that I I actually am not aware of a subpoena I believe that there may be but I know we're working with them thank you you're chief operating officer Ms Sandberg suggested on the NBC Today Show that Facebook users who do not want their personal information used for advertising might have to pay for that protection pay for it are you actually considering having facebook users pay for you not to use that information senator people have a control over how their information is used in ads in the product today so if you want to have an experience where your ads aren't you aren't targeted using all the information that we have available you can turn off third-party information what we found is that even though some people don't like ads people really don't like ads that aren't relevant and while there is some discomfort for sure with using information in making ads more relevant the overwhelming feedback that we get from our community is that people would rather have us show relevant content there than not so we offer this control that either you're referencing some people use it it's not the majority of people on Facebook and and I think that that's that's a good level of control to offer I think what Cheryl was saying was that in order to not run ads at all we would still need some sort of business model and that is your business model so I take it that and I use the harmless example of chocolate but if it got into more personal thing communicating with friends and I want to cut it off I'm gonna have to pay you in order not to send me using my personal information something that I don't want that in essence is what I understood Miss Anne Berg to say is that correct yes senator although to be clear we don't offer an option today for people to pay to not show ads we think offering an ad-supported service is the most aligned with our mission of trying to help connect everyone in the world because we want to offer a free service that everyone can afford okay that's the only way that we can reach billions of people so therefore you can my personally identifiable data the company's data not my data is that it no senator actually at the first line of our Terms of Service say that you control and owned the information and content that you put on Facebook you don't think you have a monopoly all right certainly doesn't feel like that to me here's the question that all of us kind of answered what do we tell our constituents given what's happened here while we should let you self-regulate what would you tell people in South Carolina that given all the things we've just discovered here it's a good idea for us to rely upon you to regulate your own business practices well senator my position is not that there should be no regulation I think the internet is increasing in embrace regulation I think the real question as the Internet becomes more important in people's lives is what is the right regulation not whether there should be you as a company welcomed regulation I think if it's the right regulation then you think the Europeans have it right I think that they get things right have you ever submitted that's true so would you work with us in terms of what regulations you think are necessary in your industry absolutely okay would you submit this and proposed regulations yes and I'll have my team follow up with you so that way we can have this discussion across the different categories where I think that this discussion needs to look forward to it would you support a child online privacy bill of rights for kids under 16 to guarantee that that information is not reused for any other purpose without explicit permission from the parents or the kids senator I think that as a general principle I think protecting people protecting minors and protecting their privacy is extremely important and we do a number of things on facebook to do that already which I'm happy I'm talking about a law I'm talking about a lot would you support a law to ensure that kids under 16 have this privacy Bill of Rights I had this conversation with you in your office seven years ago about this specific in palo alto and and i think that's really what the american people want to know right now what is the protections of this what are the protections that are going to be put on the books for their families but especially for their children would you support a privacy Bill of Rights for kids where opt-in is the standard yes or no senator I think that that's an important principle and precinct and I think we should we need a law to protect those children that's my question - do you believe we need a lot to do so yes or no senator I'm not sure if we need a law but I think that this is certainly a thing that that discard that that deserves a lot of discussion and I again I couldn't disagree with you more other we're leaving these children to the most rapacious commercial predators in the country who will exploit these children unless we absolutely have a law on the books and absolutely scary sure please give a short answer senator I look forward to having my team follow up to flesh out the details of it I don't think this is like Senator play to get a grip correct answer Thank You mr. chairman