Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday tried to fend off charges that his monolithic social media platform has an anti-conservative bias, while acknowledging at the end of two days of close questioning on Capitol Hill that he sees clear signs lawmakers intend to regulate the troubled industry he helped create.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee pressed the famously reclusive 33-year-old multibillionaire repeatedly over questions of political censorship and whether Facebook’s internal monitors and algorithms were unfairly silencing conservative voices.
Conservatives have long complained that Facebook blocks right-leaning pages and posts, and pushes their content lower on its platform.
Mr. Zuckerberg insisted under questioning from House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, that “there is absolutely no directive” to have “any kind of bias in anything we do.”
Rep. Joe Barton, Texas Republican, and Missouri GOP Rep. Billy Long raised the case such as Diamond and Silk — a pair of black sisters from North Carolina famed for their live-streamed video blogging in strong support of President Trump. Displaying the sisters’ picture at the hearing, Mr. Long said the duo had recently been told by Facebook their content is “unsafe.”
“What is ’unsafe’ about two black women supporting President Donald J. Trump?” Mr. Long asked.
“Nothing is unsafe about that,” Mr. Zuckerberg replied. “The specifics of this situation, I’m not up to speed …”
Mr. Long then joined the long list of lawmakers from both parties who have warned Mr. Zuckerberg that Facebook’s inability to police itself was quickly forcing Washington’s hand to consider greater government oversight.
Mr. Zuckerberg admitted as much earlier in the day, declaring that government regulation of the social media industry is “inevitable.”
“The internet is growing in importance around the world in people’s lives and I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation,” he said. “So my position is not that there should be no regulation, but I also think that you have to be careful about regulation you put in place.”
Observers said Mr. Zuckerberg generally survived two days of House and Senate grilling in relatively good shape, referring many questions to this staff and patiently explaining the realities of the social media marketplace to lawmakers not always well versed in the online universe. He was often nicked but never floored despite coming in amid bipartisan outrage over new revelations of privacy abuses and foreign manipulation of Facebook and other social media sites in the 2016 election.
Appearing before the House Energy and Commerce committee less than a day after he endured a roughly five-hour session before a Senate panel, Mr. Zuckerberg withstood a harsher grilling from House members who pushed him on issues above and beyond the privacy breach scandal that brought him to Washington in the first place.
Mr. Zuckerberg even revealed that his own data was among that harvested by Cambridge Analytica, the U.K.-based political research firm affiliated with the Trump 2016 campaign that improperly scooped up data on about 87 million Facebook users.
On Wednesday in a related development, Cambridge Analytica announced its acting CEO was stepping down and that previous CEO, Alexander Nix, remains suspended.
Composed but at times bleary-eyed, Mr. Zuckerberg managed to maintain his composure enough during Wednesday’s intense interview session that Wall Street, which pummeled Facebook’s stock for the Cambridge Analytica data leak, rewarded the firm with a second day of gains on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Even so, the day witnessed multiple testy exchanges.
With roughly 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook played a central role in the election-meddling saga and lawmakers repeatedly queried Mr. Zuckerberg about Russia’s attempts to use it to influence voters.
Early on, during a debate over Facebook limiting the amount of user data being shared, the social media mogul declined to commit to changing the platform’s default privacy settings which critics say open the door to abuse.
“It’s a complex issue,” Mr. Zuckerberg explained.
“That’s disappointing to me,” responded Rep. Frank Pallone, New Jersey Democratic.
Rep. David McKinley caught the witness off guard by displaying photos of illegal ads for opioid drugs he said were being sold on Facebook just the day before.
“Facebook is actually enabling an illegal activity and in so doing you are hurting people,” said the Republican West Virginian.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
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