Published On : Wed, Apr 11th, 2018

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testifies before US Congress

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Facebook cheif executive officer Mark Zuckerberg is testifying at a joint hearing of the United States Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees, in the first of two congressional hearings for the Facebook founder.

Facebook stock jumps 5% as CEO Mark Zuckerberg gets grilled in Senate.

Highlights of hearings:

There are people in Russia to sabotage our elections:

Zuckerberg says that there are people dedicated in Russia to sabotage our systems and elections.

When asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein about what Facebook was doing to prevent foreign actors from interfering in US elections, Zukcerberg said, ” This is one of my top priorities is to get this right. One of my greatest regrets is we were slow in identifying the Russian operations in 2016.”

If you delete your account, all data is gone, confirms Zuckerberg.

Can Facebook take down hate speech within 24 hours? asks Senator Leahy. Zuckerberg replies by saying, “We are working on it.”

Will do our best to maintain integrity of elections in India:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg during his congressional hearing said that he wants to ensure protection of integrity of elections, mentioning that he knows the importance of the upcoming polls in countries, including India, Hungary and Brazil.

He noted that there are several important elections in 2018 in countries like India, Hungary and Brazil and his company wants to ensure protection of integrity in these elections.

Zuckerberg says he is open to the ‘right regulation’: Senator Lindsey Graham asks Zuckerberg whether Facebook is a monopoly.

“It certainly doesn’t feel like that to me,” Zuckerberg replies, to chuckles.

To that Graham said, “Why should we let you self-regulate?”

Zuckerberg said, “I think the real question is what is the right regulation?”

He further said that Facebook will provide Graham’s office with suggestions for good regulations.

Zuckerberg dodges question on the need for a law to protect children from commercial usage of their personal data.

Zuckerberg agrees to help in passage of Honest Ads Act, a proposal to regulate online political advertising the same way as television, radio and print.

FB doesn’t ask political orientation of its employees: CEO:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbeg said that his company does not ask for political orientation of its employees.