Mark Zuckerberg’s Death Mask – And Other Stand-Out Moments From His Shambolic Testimony

Bolstered up on a cushion, so as not to appear small in front of the towering bench of senators and judiciary members gathered in Congress to question him on everything from data mining to privacy, Mark Zuckerberg did everything he could to try and save face.

Only now we are haunted by the chalky-white image of this very same visage, transparent with fear, as he attempted to answer a deluge of questions about Facebook during a gruelling five-hour hearing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

It’s worth noting here that not all of these questions were as cutting as they perhaps should have been. One senator even asked the billionaire tech entrepreneur how Facebook could sustain a business model without charging users a subscription fee.

‘Erm, Senator, we run ads,’ came Zuckerberg’s incredulous response. Surely the entire reason he was sitting in front of them?

Yet despite the lack of knowledge displayed by those questioning him, Zuckerberg maintained an uncomfortably nervous image throughout, doing little to convince concerned social media users that their data was safe in his hands.

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It’s pretty unbearable viewing, and we’ve decided to watch it so you don’t have to. Here are the key take-homes we learned from the testimony.

Mark says he fully believes in Facebook users’ right to privacy…

‘I believe it’s important to tell people exactly how the information that they share on Facebook is going to be used,’ he told Congress.

‘That’s why, every single time you go to share something on Facebook, whether it’s a photo in Facebook, or a message, every single time, there’s a control right there about who you’re going to be sharing it with... and you can change that and control that in line.’

If you’re wondering why Facebook privacy policy isn’t much more thorough, Zuckerberg says that users would find them ‘very confusing’ and it would make it less accessible to people.

But there is certainly some data he wouldn’t want to share publicly that Facebook can certainly glean from user data…

Asked by Senator Dick Durbin if Zuckerberg would be comfortable sharing the name of the hotel he stayed in the night before, he replied somewhat uncomfortably: ‘No. I would probably not choose to do that publicly, here.’

‘I think everyone should have control over how their information is used,’ he said.

Perhaps a contradiction, then, that he later went on to admit that Facebook does ‘store data’, some of which ‘with people’s permission’.

He did not answer how much data Facebook stores WITHOUT people’s permission, however.

Facebook is apparently in an ‘arms race’ with Russia…

Zuckerberg admitted that one of the company’s biggest challenges was keeping tabs on Russian operators seeking to exploit the social media platform for its own insight and gains.

‘There are people in Russia whose job it is to try to exploit our systems and other internet systems and other systems as well,’ he said.

‘This is an ongoing arms race. As long as there are people sitting in Russia whose job is it to try to interfere in elections around the world, this is going to be an ongoing conflict.’

He also admitted that Facebook staff had been questioned by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

Facebook DOES NOT listen in on your conversations through your phone microphone…

One Senator quizzed Zuckerberg on the much-fabled 2016 conspiracy theory that Facebook is listening to you through your mobile phone.

Zuckerberg simply answered ‘No,’ before adding:

‘Senator, let me get clear on this, you’re talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we listen to what’s going on on your microphone and use that for ads.

‘To be clear, we do allow people to take videos on their devices and share those, and videos have audio, so we do while you’re taking a video, record that and use that to make the service is better by making sure your videos have audio, but I think that is pretty clear. But I just wanted to make sure I was exhaustive there.’

He’s a bit confused about this whole Cambridge Analytica thing and keeps forgetting whether they advertised with Facebook or not…

Not the smartest of looks for the man in control of the digital footprints of 87 million users.

‘Cambridge Analytica wasn’t using our services in 2015, as far as we can tell ... They weren’t an advertiser. They weren’t running pages. So we actually had nothing to ban,’ he said at first.

Then later, he corrected himself.

‘I want to correct one thing that I said earlier in response to a question… [on] why we didn’t ban Cambridge Analytica at the time when we learned about them in 2015.

‘[From] what my understanding was .. they were not on the platform, [they] were not an app developer or advertiser. When I went back and met with my team afterwards, they let me know that Cambridge Analytica actually did start as an advertiser later in 2015.

‘So we could have in theory banned them then. We made a mistake by not doing so. But I just wanted to make sure that I updated that because I ... I ... I misspoke, or got that wrong earlier.

‘When we heard back from Cambridge Analytica that they had told us that they weren’t using the data and deleted it, we considered it a closed case. In retrospect, that was clearly a mistake. We shouldn’t have taken their word for it. We’ve updated our policy to make sure we don’t make that mistake again.’

Hmm.

People were unclear whether Zuckerberg was indeed human or just desperately trying to conceal his actual lizard form underneath his deathly-white skin…

Twitter had an absolute field day at Facebook’s expense, and here are some of the best memes to prove it:

He seemed to be up for suggestions that laws should be implemented to greater regulate social media…

‘My position is not that there should be no regulation,’ he said.

‘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 or not.’

It didn’t actually go as badly for Facebook as it might have seemed…

In fact, Facebook’s share price had risen by a sizeable 5 per cent, adding a cool £3billion to Zuckerberg’s net worth. And that was at the end of the hearing’s first break.

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.