Facebook's Zuckerberg apologizes to U.S. Congress, vows to do better

Throughout a five-hourhearing, U.S. senators from both sides of the aisle grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergon Tuesday.

Zuckerbergfaced44 senators in a rare joint hearing of the Senate judiciary and commerce committeesto talk about how his social media company protects user data and deals with electionmeddling, among other issues.

In his opening remarks Tuesday,Zuckerberg,33,said that Facebook didn't do enough to prevent its tools from being used for harm citing fake news, interference in foreign elections, hate speech and data privacy.

But he rejected the suggestionthat his company was "wilfully blind" and said he has made major changes to the service to seek out fake accounts andto better protect users' privacy.

Zuckerberg's awkward moment

7 years ago

Duration 1:45

Senator Dick Durbin asks Facebook CEO if he'd share the name of the hotel where he's staying

Facebook revealed last month that political consulting firm CambridgeAnalytica(CA), which had ties to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, may have harvested data of 87 million users without their knowledge.

Democratic SenatorRichardBlumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general, produceda document his staff called a previously undisclosed 2014 agreement in which Facebook granted the researcher at the centre of the Cambridge Analyticascandal permission to sell data collected from Facebook users through a survey.

Facebook has claimed it was deceived by the researcher, whose survey was used to collect data on up to 87 million users.

• Read the complete text ofZuckerberg'stestimony

Blumenthalasked if the document violated a 2011 consent decree on improving user privacy that Facebook reached with the Federal Trade Commission.

Zuckerbergsaid no, but also said the document was "in conflict" with Facebook rules.

Blumenthaldecried Facebook's "wilfulblindness" and insisted it will only change its ways with strict regulation.

'Political bias'

RepublicanSenatorTed Cruz, of Texas, saidmany Americans are concerned that Facebook is biased against conservatives.

Cruz toldZuckerbergthat to many people there "appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias" after someconservative pages were taken down from the platform. In a series of pointed questions, Cruz askedZuckerbergif he had tracked the political affiliations of his employees.

Zuckerbergsaid he had not. But he noted that the company is based in left-leaning Silicon Valley, and said "it is a fair concern."

CambridgeAnalyticahas boasted of helping Cruz win the Iowa caucus in 2016.

Zuckerberg 'responsible'

Zuckerbergapologized Tuesday and said he is "responsible" for what happens on Facebook. He reiterated that the company is in the process of investigating "manyapps" that had access to user data.

A day earlier, Facebook began sending messages to users who may have had their data harvested, and created a help page where they could check.

The revelations gave rise to the hashtag #deletefacebook, which some social media users vowed to do. The campaign gained momentum when some celebrities and business figures did just that, including actors Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey, singer Cher and tech mogul Elon Musk.

Zuckerberghas apologized many times already, to users and the public,but it is the first time in his career that he has gone before Congress. Hewill testify again Wednesday, before a House panel, as he triesto restore public trust in his company and also stave off federal regulation that some lawmakers have floated.

Working with Mueller probe

Zuckerbergwas asked about Russia's use of U.S. social media during the 2016 elections a subject of several congressional investigations and special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference.

In his opening statement, headdressed Russian electioninterference and acknowledged, as he has in the past, that thecompany was too slow to respond and that it's "working hard to getbetter." The company has said that as many as 146 million peoplemay have received information from a Russian agency that's accusedof orchestrating much of the cyber meddling in the election.

"We will continue working with the government to understand thefull extent of Russian interference, and we will do our part notonly to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around theworld, but also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for goodin democracy everywhere," Zuckerberg continued.

Zuckerberg added his company is "working with" the Mueller probe.

Earlier this year Mueller charged 13 Russians andthree Russian companies in a plot to interfere in the election through a social media propaganda effort thatincluded online ad purchases using U.S. aliases and politicking onU.S. soil. Some of the Russian ads were on Facebook.

"One of my greatest regrets in running the company is that we were slow in identifying the Russian information operations in 2016,"Zuckerbergsaid.

"We expected them to do a number of more traditionalcyberattacks, which we did identify and notify the campaigns that they were trying to hack into them, but we were slow to identifying that type of new information operations."He said Facebookhas deployed new artificial intelligence tools and will continue to keep improving.

"You know, there are people in Russia whose job it is to try to exploit our systems and other Internet systems and other systems, as well. So this is an arms race," he said. "I mean, they're going to keep on getting better at this and we need to invest in keeping on getting better at this too."

He plans to have more than 20,000 people by the end of the year working on "security and content review."

Push for regulation

Zuckerberg met Monday with Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate commerce panel. Nelson said afterward that Zuckerberg was "forthright and honest to the degree he could" be in the private, one-on-one meeting.

Nelson said he believes Zuckerberg is taking the congressional hearings seriously "because he knows there is going to be a hard look at regulation."

Democrats like Nelson have argued that federal laws might be necessary to ensure user privacy. Republicans so far have shown little appetite for such regulation, but that could change if there are future privacy scandals or Democrats gain control of Congress in this November's elections.

"I think he understands that regulation could be right around the corner," Nelson said.

Separately, Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Monday that the company is establishing an independent election research commission that will look into the effects of social media on elections and democracy. He said the commission will work with foundations across the U.S. to set up a committee of academic experts who will come up with research topics and select independent researchers to study them.