Gadgetory

today Mark Zuckerberg finally appeared before the European Parliament to testify about Facebook's impact on society from data privacy to elections but the format was different from what most American viewers are probably used to instead of a back and forth between Zuckerberg and the politicians all the members of the Parliament asked their questions first Zuckerberg took notes and at the end of the meeting he picked out the questions he wanted to respond to then he promised he'd get back to the group with the rest the entire thing was a little frustrating even to the legislators and eventually dissolved into a mess I asked you six yes and no questions I got not a single answer so thank you again for was one question raised by a giver who said and we did that's linked to my question the problem is the timing okay I'll make sure we follow up and get you answers to those despite that the European legislators asked some pretty good questions and weren't afraid to be a little aggressive you have to ask yourself well how you will be remembered as one of the three big internet giants together with Steve Jobs I should say and Bill Gates who have enriched or world and all societies or at the other hand in fact the genius will create a digital monster that is destroying all democracies and of societies Solomon and I'm asking you today very very clearly that would you accept that today Facebook is not a platform for all ideas that is operated in partially the most pressing questions are Coburg faced was whether Facebook was a monopoly during last month's congressional hearings Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether Zuckerberg could name a competitor to Facebook and a couple of European legislators brought that issue up again but with a more pointed thread attached would you consider your company as a monopoly I think it is time to discuss breaking Facebook's monopoly because it's already too much power in only one hand can you convince me not to do something you cannot convince him because it's nonsense naturally you have to give the example of Twitter you have given the example I think also Google as some of your competitors but it's like somebody who has a monopoly in making cars is saying look I have a monopoly making cars but there is no problem you can take a plane you can take a train when it came time to answer Zuckerberg said that he didn't think that was true at all and generally dismissed the concern we exist in a very competitive space where people use a lot of different tools for communication or the average person uses about eight different tools for communication ranging from all sorts of private messaging up to more broadcast mediums to things where they're communicating with groups of people and and all their friends at once so from where I sit it feels like there are new competitors coming up every day there are competitors that reach tens and hundreds of millions of people and we're constantly needing to evolve our service in order to stay relevant and serve people well so that feels like it's a competitive environment where there are many choices that people have a number of politicians suggested that even if it isn't time to break up a monopoly Facebook needs to be aggressively regulated are you ready to completely comply with the new regulation in Europe in the next three days when you said that the regulation will be implemented in spirit what does that mean exactly in response Zuckerberg offered what's become a canned reply I don't think the question here is whether or not there should be regulation I think the question is what is the right regulation but so far these bright regulations remain elusive and as one legislator pointed out early in the hearing self-regulation has not worked well in the past it's a little bit like with the banks in the 2006 2007 2008 they said also in are we gonna do self-regulation don't bother no no we're gonna do it ourselves the reality is that they didn't do them themselves and it was needed to have tough regulation then there was the question of how Facebook stores data especially of people who aren't even on Facebook otherwise known as their shadow profiles how can non users stop Facebook collecting their data and what do you do they're not done on Facebook's data do you commercialize it and given you do that is it morally acceptable you think in your opinion to collect nan Yunnan Facebook users data without them know what you do with it and Zuckerberg nearly concluded without even mentioning these is there anything else separate profiles shadow profiles didn't seem to want to talk about shadow profiles at all and changed the subject pretty quickly if you're not a Facebook user how do you stop that day to be transferred on a security side we think it's important to keep it to protect people in our community were there any other themes that we want to get through and there's what some these hearings are happening largely because people are worried about election meddling on Facebook whether through fake news propaganda or through Cambridge analytical data siphoning this was lost on legislators with Facebook commit to one eradicate all remaining fake accounts by the end of the quarter and be systematically prevent the creation of new ones moving forward Zuckerberg continued to say there's no quick fix to this problem will never be perfect on this you know our adversaries especially on the election side people are trying to interfere will have access to some of the same AI tools that we will but that's a pretty obvious statement the details are what matter and Facebook is still just talking up as two favorite weapons moderators and AI the game plan is a combination of building more AI tools to identify fake accounts that are trying to interfere and take them down like we did in the French presidential election our vision for how we should manage the system is going to move from one of reactive management as people in our community flag things to one where we're poor proactively having systems look at the content flag things for tens of thousands of people to review and we're already making significant progress in doing that and there were a lot of other questions which were never answered these included broad questions about whether Facebook can really keep people's data safe after Cambridge analytic oh he's Cambridge analytic an isolated case of would you say it's a top of the iceberg but also extremely specific ones about how quickly Facebook's scrubs data that a user asks to be deleted if people want to come off Facebook how quickly and under what conditions will the data be fully removed or whether Facebook would work with antitrust regulators to prove it's not a monopoly would you or would you cooperate with the European antitrust authorities to examine it and to open your books so that we can see if yes or no there is a monopole Zuckerberg promised to give written answers to all these questions but that's the same line he used during the u.s. congressional hearings we don't know when the answers will come how thorough they'll be or if Zuckerberg will give a straight answer to the toughest demands can you guarantee the disease Europeans that another scandal will not happen in three six or nine months time is the only way of preventing Facebook affecting my data to avoid the internet altogether and after watching legislators ask good difficult questions about Facebook that feels like a huge wasted opportunity is Facebook really taking its responsibilities more seriously will lawmakers start trying to regulate it or will we just keep hearing this same speech over and over so the fact that maybe you have less control or no control about your own company for the moment because you have to apologize now I think in turtle you apologize now fifteen or sixteen times the last decade in 2003 you've started every year you have one or other wrongdoing or problem with Facebook and and you have to face the reality and to say sorry and to say that you're gonna fix it are you capable to fix it