The second day was marked by tougher questions focussed on data privacy, security and interference in political process. He was grilled for more than ten hours over two days by 100 US lawmakers.
This elicited a question from Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey, at the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing, “How can consumers have control over their data when Facebook does not have control over the data?”
In the course of fielding question Zuckerberg said over forty times that he had no answers at hand and would get back to them later. About one in three lawmakers got that response over the two days.
Zuckerberg said it would take “many months” to complete an audit of other apps that might also have improperly gathered or shared users’ data.
“I do imagine that we will find some apps that were either doing something suspicious or misusing people’s data,” he said.
He was also asked very specific questions on the company’s handling of user data, especially about the platform’s privacy settings, which put the onus on users to protect their privacy. Questions included whether the social network should be regulated, the Russians activities on Facebook during the 2016 election, whether the social network had a liberal bias and what Facebook ultimately is as it has grown into a global behemoth.
The hearings were prompted by a scandal over data harvesting by a third-party organization.