Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before a House of Representatives committee this week, concerning the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Ahead of time, Facebook has released a prepared testimony, featuring the comments that Zuckerberg will make during his testimony. “Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company,” he will say. However, he will also acknowledge that, “it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.”
Later today, Zuckerberg will testify before the Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committees, prior to Wednesday’s House committee hearing. He spent Monday meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
You can read Zuckerberg’s complete testimony here.
Tech giants aren’t siding with Facebook
Unlike Apple’s past standoff with the FBI over encryption and privacy, Facebook hasn’t received a strong outpouring of support from fellow tech giants. Fellow entrepreneur Elon Musk deleted the official Tesla and SpaceX pages from the social network as well, while even the co-founder of WhatsApp (which was bought by Facebook) suggested that people delete the Facebook app.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been critical of Zuckerberg as well. When Cook was recently asked what he would have done if he was in Facebook’s situation he answered, “I wouldn’t be in this situation.” He also called for regulation to be put in place. Zuck dismissed the comments as “glib.”
As I’ve argued before, Apple stands to gain from any increased regulation of companies which rely on the monetizing of user data for their business model. While I expect that the case involving Facebook will ultimately result in more noise than action, the next few days are nonetheless going to be fascinating to watch unfold.
Via: Vox
