Zuckerberg's Senate Committee testimony

[Nebraska]

i watched almost all 5 hours  and noticed a couple of things:

 

1. zuckerberg was had obviously gone through this with his legal team to the point where he came off a little contrived eg. almost 60% of the first 3 hours had him going "i'll have to get my team to follow up with you" and "thank you senator and that's a very important question and i'll have to get back to you on that"

 

2. not sure if this was a legality thing, but it made me chuckle that he didn't know how soon facebook takes to delete user data if they delete their account. i know it's something like 20-30 days for that data being purged from the servers, so i'm guessing during the breaks there were techs being told first person to turn that into 7 days gets a huge bonus. 

 

3. a little of a witch hunt from the perspective of the senators. seriously: everyone wanted things to be perfectly catered to them which is a little impossible for a company the size of facebook and everyone thinking even their mistakes are facebook's problem. if you choose to share some compromising picture of yourself and someone saves that image and later uses it to discredit or blackmail you i don't see how that's facebooks fault.

one senator didn't seem to understand this and that wasted a few 30 or so minutes with every other senator thinking "ha! we finally got him"

 

4. for a billionaire he had the worst suit in the room. how does that work?

 

5. facebook stock went up by something like 4% after zuckerberg mentioned the potential for a paid platform of facebook (you get no ads, they don't track you etc) although zuckerberg doesn't really like this idea, it seemed to clam the senators down since in their world, if you're paying for it, it must work.

 

also, i found this image of zucks going to the testimony a little disturbing

 

 

[Hugh Mughnus]

 

 

we all knew for a long time how facebook handles your data

This, for me. I didn't think even for a millisecond my personal data was safe or private. Are there people out there legit shocked? I mean, you voluntarily give all of your personal information to FB, tag yourself as being here or there, tell the world what you do in your spare time, etc. :shrugs:

 

thx Nebraska for starting a dedicated thread btw. Not sure what to expect will come of all this.

[pcock]

facebook/3rd party companies using your data in naughty ways is probably the most uninteresting item of news ive ever heard. 

[ignatius]

this has generated several new meme formats. 

 

but yeah.. i didn't watch any of it. i expected it would all be well rehearsed and contrived horse shit well talked over with his advisors. 

 

worst suit because he's a robot. 

 

"first android on trial"

 

booster seat

 

 

[chenGOD]

i watched almost all 5 hours  and noticed a couple of things:

 

1. zuckerberg was had obviously gone through this with his legal team to the point where he came off a little contrived eg. almost 60% of the first 3 hours had him going "i'll have to get my team to follow up with you" and "thank you senator and that's a very important question and i'll have to get back to you on that"

 

2. not sure if this was a legality thing, but it made me chuckle that he didn't know how soon facebook takes to delete user data if they delete their account. i know it's something like 20-30 days for that data being purged from the servers, so i'm guessing during the breaks there were techs being told first person to turn that into 7 days gets a huge bonus. 

 

3. a little of a witch hunt from the perspective of the senators. seriously: everyone wanted things to be perfectly catered to them which is a little impossible for a company the size of facebook and everyone thinking even their mistakes are facebook's problem. if you choose to share some compromising picture of yourself and someone saves that image and later uses it to discredit or blackmail you i don't see how that's facebooks fault.

one senator didn't seem to understand this and that wasted a few 30 or so minutes with every other senator thinking "ha! we finally got him"

 

4. for a billionaire he had the worst suit in the room. how does that work?

 

5. facebook stock went up by something like 4% after zuckerberg mentioned the potential for a paid platform of facebook (you get no ads, they don't track you etc) although zuckerberg doesn't really like this idea, it seemed to clam the senators down since in their world, if you're paying for it, it must work.

 

also, i found this image of zucks going to the testimony a little disturbing

 

 

1. 100% he had the best prep team money can buy - everything from the slightly nerdy haircut to his mannerisms was probably coached, and he had policy people prepping Qs and As for him (if he didn't, Mark since I know you're reading this, hit me up).

 

2. Looks like he didn't have people prepping Qs and As for him after all....seriously Mark, hit me up.

 

3. Senators are old as fuck and can barely turn on their computers without calling IT.

 

4. See number 1 - image is everything

 

5. See number 3. Also tha Zucc knows that paid facebook will go the way of MySpace in a hurry.

[ignatius]

[ignatius]

he's a bit awkward. i find it interesting but somehow obvious that a person like  him would make a the biggest social networking thing ever.  even just his first "i started facebook, i run it, i take responsibility for what happened..." blah blah that i saw on the news seems fucking weird. it's obvious he doesn't want to be there and considers being called to testify before congress as an in convenient PR formality. 

 

congress is playing catch up with any regulations. 

[Nebraska]

 is this hearing specifically about CA or more broadly about how facebook handles privacy?

 

it's more about how facebook handles privacy although the senator who drilled that the most specified that since facebook is an american company, it kinda owed it a lot more to protect american people's data.

 

also brought up was that even though cambridge analytica is based in the united kingdom, there's no way to tell where the data is actually kept i.e. they could have a server in russia and thus there would be no way to do an audit and find what information that was actually compromised.

 

zucks answer to this was basically that it's facebook main focus right now to fix security- to which another female senator drilled him about being hacked before. for a brief minute zucks glitched, but came back with a very technical answer about how it would be best if people just encrypted all data. this didn't seem to be understood and since each member of the committee only had 5 minutes to ask questions etc. there clearly wasn't enough time to explain some "technical terms"

 

a big part of this also seemed to be the committees need to find a person to blame for the data breach- and whilst their main scapegoat is facebook- they seemed to ignore personal responsibility on the endusers as far as what they choose to share about themselves. and whilst facebook has ballooned into a behemoth it currently is- despite this data breach many people (about 9 billion of them) find themselves stuck using the service because everyone else is on the site. even as one senator put it: all of them are facebook users as that's how the communicate with their constituents. 

[chenGOD]

Didn’t watch the testimony with sound on because work space, but did they really call the Cambridge Analytica deal a hacking incident?

[zaphod]

i watched almost all 5 hours

 

good god

[Salvatorin]

I also watched it all. My favorite thing was watching Joel Kaplan and Myriah Jordan.

 

 

 

 

[Nebraska]

Didn’t watch the testimony with sound on because work space, but did they really call the Cambridge Analytica deal a hacking incident?

 

no. zuckerberg had said that user security was always the top priority at facebook. one of the senators asked zuckerberg whether facebook has ever been hacked. zucks said it had. she then grilled him that facebook obviously didn't care about security because they hadn't addressed security issues when that hack happened and hence the cambridge analytica data breach. zuck glitched but said that he was unable to answer the question properly until they did an audit of the cambridge analytica servers but he was happy to follow up on it with her as soon as he got that info

 

 

i watched almost all 5 hours

 

good god

 

 

haha well, there were some times i couldn't watch but tried to pay close attention to what was happening. usually when they laughed or said something silly i tried to tune in. each time they went for a break i would miss when they got back by maybe a minute or two

[ambermonk]

Zucchini is confirmed reptile being masquerading as homo sapiens

[chim]

Thanks for recapping.

[hello spiral]

I watched it with new autechre looping and many good quips from not-chatmm. A good time was had by all

 

[Squee]

lol

[mcbpete]

https://twitter.com/davidoreilly/status/983782270241771521

[YangYing]

lol does anyone even use facebook anymore?

[joshuatxuk]

lol does anyone even use facebook anymore?

 

I wouldn't if I didn't have my folks and in-laws demanding convenient grand kid pictures

 

also there's this FB message thread between me and some friends hat's been running for 8+ years and we're too lazy to migrate it to somewhere else

[joshuatxuk]

https://twitter.com/davidoreilly/status/983782270241771521

 

[fumi]

I despise social networks (particularly Facebook). These cronies are great at making billions of dollars because they do not give a flying fuck about their users. With social media, users create all the wealth for free. That's a great business model for Zuck and all the cronies in Silicon Valley.

[fumi]

All I heard yesterday (maybe close to a dozen times) was:

 

"I'll get my team to follow that up for you."

[Entorwellian]

 

[Nebraska]

I despise social networks (particularly Facebook). These cronies are great at making billions of dollars because they do not give a flying fuck about their users. With social media, users create all the wealth for free. That's a great business model for Zuck and all the cronies in Silicon Valley.

 

but i don't see why you blame him. i don't have a facebook because i'm not into social media, but i don't blame zuckerberg for creating. i'd have created facebook if i could, i cannot- hence did not. zuckerberg did. even he thinks people that trust him with their data are "dumb fucks" but people- despite knowing this still use his platform. as far as i see it, they get what they deserve. and so does he.

[fumi]

 

I despise social networks (particularly Facebook). These cronies are great at making billions of dollars because they do not give a flying fuck about their users. With social media, users create all the wealth for free. That's a great business model for Zuck and all the cronies in Silicon Valley.

 

but i don't see why you blame him. i don't have a facebook because i'm not into social media, but i don't blame zuckerberg for creating. i'd have created facebook if i could, i cannot- hence did not. zuckerberg did. even he thinks people that trust him with their data are "dumb fucks" but people- despite knowing this still use his platform. as far as i see it, they get what they deserve. and so does he.

 

 

 

Yeah, I agree with you but what really irks me is that they want the incredible wealth but aren't willing to take any responsibility for how it is made. Today's questions seem much more probing. Honestly, for a CEO, Zuck doesn't seem to have a clue what is going on within his company. He's been too busy counting those dollars.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Zuck, Sandberg and the others haven't really created anything apart from the facebook framework. Users create the content, for free which generates the profits. Zuck feels that he's not responsible for what is created but he's more than happy to take the money it generates.

 

It all needs regulation.