A little more than three months after changing its name to Meta Platforms and a day after Wall Street returned the favor of a massive revenue guidance miss by cratering its market cap, analysts scrambled to make sense of it all. 

Facebook parent Meta lost about $232 billion in market capitalization Thursday (February 4) — the largest one-day drop by a single company in U.S. stock market history — after it said Q1 revenue would miss Wall Street forecasts by $2 billion, spurred by a combination of intense competition from TikTok, increasingly onerous privacy requirements from Apple Inc. and just plain bad luck. Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which creates the augmented reality and virtual reality products that are expected to be the building blocks of the metaverse, lost about $10.2 billion on revenue of $2.3 billion. 

While Q4 revenue at $33.7 billion was even with estimates, Meta said it lost about 1 million daily global users in the quarter, adding to concerns that its relevance is slipping with younger consumers. 

Meta’s dilemma is eerily similar to Netflix, which saw its stock fall 25% in January after it missed Q4 subscriber growth targets and said it would add just 2 million paying customers in Q1. Netflix has gained some of those losses back: It was trading at $405.18 on Friday afternoon, about even with the previous day.

Also: Netflix Isn’t Quite Dead Yet 

Meta shares fell more than 26% on Thursday, forcing analysts to rejigger their models for the stock and try to find some sense in such a dramatic miss. The stock fell another 2% on Friday, priced at $232.67 at 12:07 p.m. 

In report after report, analysts that follow the stock pointed to the surprising impact of short-form video juggernaut TikTok — even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on an earnings conference call that TikTok was “growing at a much faster rate” than Facebook’s own Reels short-form video service. 

At the same time, Apple’s new privacy measures for its iOS products are having a huge impact on ad revenue. On the conference call, Meta chief financial officer David Wehner said those iOS privacy requirements will cost Meta about $10 billion in lost revenue in 2022, which he called “a pretty significant headwind for our business.”

Most analysts were pretty shocked by the revenue impact, but kept as much optimism as they could for the company, maintaining their ratings on the stock but slashing their 12-month price targets by nearly $100. For many, their advice to investors was to ride out the storm, buy the stock at its new low-point and reap the benefits later.

Also: Metaverse or Meh-taverse? 

MoffettNathanson media analyst Michael Nathanson, in a research report entitled “Facebook: The Beginning of the End?” maintained his “buy” rating on the stock but dropped his price target from $420 to $380 per share. Evercore ISI Group analyst Mark Mahaney kept his “outperform” rating but slashed his price target to $350 from $430 per share, while Bernstein tech analyst Mark Shmulik maintained his “outperform” rating on the stock but dropped his price target from $400 to $350 per share. 

“There are days in this job that suck. Today is one of those days,” Shmulik wrote in a note to clients after Meta released its results. Shmulik noted that most analysts severely underestimated the impact of Apple’s decision to let iPhone and iPad users opt in or out of the identifiers for advertisers (IDFA) that apps use to track movement through the web and target ads accordingly. When users opt out, it makes those ads a lot less valuable.

While Shmulik and other analysts believe Facebook will eventually figure out a workaround to the IDFA, management didn’t help things during the earnings conference call by “striking a negative tone around the duration and cost (~$10B on ’22 revenues) of any potential long term fixes,” the Bernstein analyst wrote.

Nathanson, who has been a big believer that Facebook would exceed ad forecasts in the past, reduced his Q1 revenue estimate by $2 billion and his full-year 2022 revenue predictions by $12 billion, or 8%. Although he said Meta’s Q4 results were in line with most estimates, its Q1 guidance was “incredibly weak” and was a “headline grabber and not in a good way.”

Still, other analysts were optimistic of Facebook’s resilience, and saw the low stock price as a Netflix-like inflection point, referring to the streaming giant’s recent stock drop. In his note, Evercore‘s Mahaney said that Meta “could well be dead money for several months,” but remained a buyer of the stock because it is trading close to its 2018 trough multiple of 17 times cash flow, which could limit downside and because he believes the company’s new Q1 revenue guidance suggests that revenue trends are stabilizing.

Mahaney also is confident that Facebook’s Reels — its short-form video answer to TikTok — will succeed, and that its macro challenges are temporary.

“TikTok is a real issue, but primarily for Instagram, and much less so for Blue, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, FB Marketplace, etc.,” Mahaney wrote, adding that he still believes Meta has a compelling long-term business model.

“Meta Platforms has a robust combination of revenue growth (17% CAGR ‘21E-‘24E) and profitability (~40% GAAP Operating margins and 50%+ EBITDA margins in ‘21),” Mahaney wrote. “Their core Family of Apps operating margins of near 50% in FY21, supports the significant investment in Reality Labs. The FCF generation has been equally impressive: $39B in FY21. And this has allowed them to execute sizeable share buybacks ($40B+ in ‘21) that we believe are sustainable going forwards.” ■   

The term “metaverse” has become a thing again because Mark Zuckerberg has decided to wholeheartedly embrace the idea of a 3D, interactive world where users can work, play and be entertained, even changing Facebook’s holding company name to Meta. 

So while the social media mavens continue to tout how the cool kids will use whatever Silicon Valley can throw at them to interact with content, create creepy little avatars of themselves while they talk to and text their friends’ equally creepy-looking avatars and play games and whatnot using advanced augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology, just remember that this is really nothing new. 

It’s being touted as a revolution but for me, a person definitely way outside the target audience for these products, we’ve been down this road before. Interacting with content is nothing new for media watchers — we’ve been talking about it ever since Time Warner Cable launched the Full Service Network back in the 1990s. And with streaming and ultra high-speed broadband outpacing more traditional forms of entertainment consumption, media types have long prepared for this inevitable evolution.  

But the media business has never met a buzzword that it couldn’t beat to death and for the moment, “metaverse” appears to fit that bill. According to Bernstein Research, “metaverse” mentions on public company conference calls rose from just one in Q2 2020 to 449 in 3Q 2021.

Even actor Keanu Reeves, an owner of bitcoin and enthusiastic embracer of technology — he’s Neo, for gosh sakes — has asked for the metaverse hype to be turned down a notch, telling The Verge during the press tour for the upcoming Matrix: Resurrections movie that the term is decades old. 

Also: Meta May Not Be Betta But it Still Matters to Streaming Video’s Future  

“Can we just not have metaverse be like invented by Facebook?” Reeves told The Verge. “The concept of the metaverse is like, way older. It’s like, c’mon man.”  

Bernstein Research hosted a conference call with its clients about the metaverse on Dec. 10 (a transcript was provided on Dec. 16) and for software developers and hardware manufacturers it appears that momentum is going their way.

According to Bernstein, the metaverse could represent a $2 trillion annual revenue opportunity, but there is a big question regarding timing: nobody knows exactly when that opportunity will come. Still, that revenue is expected to come from multiple sources — advertising, gaming, software, mobile apps and more — and some is even being spent to some extent today.  

“Companies are already spending to build it [the metaverse] and that costs real capital dollars,” Bernstein Internet analyst Mark Schmulik said on the call. “As they build it, we're already starting to see certain companies like Meta gain traction in hardware sales and related software sales. While it's still too early to draw a line of whether that's going to be successful or not, it's certainly underway.” 

That includes cable and telecom companies, which see the metaverse as another catalyst to drive the need for higher speeds. On the Dec. 10 Bernstein call, cable and telecom analyst Peter Supino noted that he expects 80 million U.S. homes to have at least one way to purchase Gigabit symmetrical service by 2025. 

And while wireless has been capacity constrained in the past, Supino noted that about 500 megahertz of mid-band spectrum has been reallocated by the Big Three carriers (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) to 5G. 

The metaverse also is important to the cloud services business, because connecting as many machines as possible is a big priority. And that need for connectivity could be a potential boon for Dish Network, which has about 100 MHz of fallow wireless spectrum and partnership possibilities with Amazon Web Services, Azure or Google Cloud. 

“Dish is an unencumbered, high capacity link between the industrial metaverse and the cloud service providers that would like to serve and foster it,” Supino said.

But on the media and entertainment side, the benefits of the metaverse aren’t so clear.

Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger admitted he was a “card-carrying” cynic when it comes to the Metaverse, adding that with all the hype surrounding the industry’s latest buzzword, he’s feeling more than a little déjà vu.  

Also: A Deeper Look At the Netflix VR Environment 

“The reason I'm cynical is that I feel like I've seen this before in media and entertainment,” Juenger said according to the transcript. “To me, the metaverse just sounds like a new word to describe an evolution that's naturally happening anyway.”

He then went on to offer an example. Remember 3D? Not too long ago, in the wake of James Cameron’s Avatar, the most successful 3D movie ever made, all content was supposed to be 3D, movies, television, networks began springing up all over the place. In 2010, ESPN was set to launch a 3D channel, Discovery was teaming up with Sony and IMAX to launch a 24-hour linear 3D network with movies, documentaries and children's programming and electronics vendors were scrambling to introduce 3D TVs to satiate what they expected to be tremendous demand. 

I don’t have to tell you what happened, but I’ll let Juenger tell you why it did anyway. 

“A couple years go by and where is 3D, right?,” Juenger said. “It was just [that] consumers didn't like it. They didn't benefit from it. It was almost being forced upon them.”

Sound familiar?

Also: A New Reality Check for VR and AR 

Juenger went on to talk about AR, which was all the rage a few years ago, fueled by Pokémon Go, the mobile game that had young and old alike wandering into traffic to capture little AR anime figures. That was supposed to take the video game business by storm and again, it didn’t. Juenger recalled that while Pokémon Go was a massive success and its still going relatively strong, it remains the go-to example of AR’s supposed takeover of the video game business a half decade after its introduction. 

“It's funny that when we talk about AR when it relates to media, we still have to use Pokémon Go as the example, right?” Juenger said, noting that in the entertainment business, everybody copies everybody else, but so far that hasn’t happened with AR. 

“If AR is a big idea, where are the other AR video games?” Juenger said. “Why do we still have to point to Pokémon Go?”

Juenger wasn’t denying the opportunity that a new and improved metaverse presents. He just believes that the concern as to whether media and entertainment companies will take advantage of it is a bit misplaced.They already seem to be doing it. 

Also: Ripley Says Bally Sports Net DTC Offering Will Be Lean-Forward Experience 

“When it comes to entertainment, I will say the content creation will follow the technology platforms.” Juenger said. “I don't deny that there will be a big advancement in devices people use and [are] using social elements of entertainment, which incorporates elements of what we call the metaverse.”

Juenger, who also follows the video game industry, said that Roblox, the online platform that allows people to play games created by other users, already bills itself as a metaverse. The difference between Roblox games and more traditional games like Grand Theft Auto, he said, is that a user can move his Roblox avatar through different games. 

“I'm not sure you even want to take your GTA persona and move it into a different game, so maybe those will just stay separate,” Juenger said. “In terms of VR and AR games — in VR games, every major publisher makes some — but they all tell you that they just earn the minimum. And the only reason they do it is not really to make money, it's really just to stay involved and to build capabilities in case this takes off.” 

Even Disney has jumped on the metaverse bandwagon, envisioning a merger of the physical and virtual worlds in its theme park experiences, which Juenger said, although a  bit cringe-worthy, probably makes sense. 

“To me, that just sounds like an idea of a Disney video game,” Juenger said, adding that the prevailing wisdom that only huge conglomerates can afford to take advantage of metaverse opportunities may not hold true. 

Sure, the mega-media giants like Disney have all the money, technology and resources and have managed to build huge communities with their brands, but their size can make them slow to react to changes in the business. With development getting easier and faster and distribution barriers being shattered across the landscape, Juenger said some believe it is time to consider smaller, faster, more advanced startups to displace some of their older, larger competitors.    

“This is all still new enough and video games are inherently innovative,” Juenger said. “I would bet on the big IPs. But I think it's an evolution, not a revolution. Video game manufacturers — they've gone through a lot of change already. I think this is just another one.” 

Other analysts have delved into the metaverse conversation, with Evercore ISI Internet analyst Mark Mahaney issuing a 33-page report on December 10 that highlighted the pros and cons of the technology. Pros: there is a lot of money to be made. Cons: It’s going to take a big change in consumer behavior to realize that revenue.

On the plus side, Mahaney said Meta (the former Facebook) is putting its money where its vision is, investing more than $10 billion annually in the concept, has about 3.5 billion monthly users in its family of apps that are already engaging in what is most likely the core use of the metaverse (social media); and has the majority of the VR device business through Oculus Quest. And the pandemic has shown that consumers are willing to interact more online -- Zoom went from 10 million data meeting participants in 2019 to 300 million by April 2020. Roblox has more than 47 million DAUs that average 2.6 hours per day on the platform in Q3 2021, and while VR adoption is still nascent -- about 2% of monthly users on Steam -- it is rising.

But there’s a downside too. According to Mahaney’s report, the biggest question is whether enough consumers will swap “real” reality for virtual reality or whether VR will just be another niche product. And then there is the technology part of the metaverse. Zuckerberg has said that the biggest challenge for the industry is cramming a super-computer into the frame of normal-looking eyeglasses. 

“Ultimately, we need high-fidelity graphics, low latency, with hundreds of millions of concurrent users in real-time at a relatively cheap price point,” Mahaney wrote.

That, to me, is going to be the real deciding factor in this. People have different expectations as to how the metaverse will look and feel and I will bet you that none of them has a basis in the current reality.

The technology industry is really good at driving interest and excitement about technology, but it takes time for these things to deliver what’s being promised. And now they are talking about a technology that in order to work as promised is literally going to have billions of users accessing servers and whatnot simultaneously. Just think of how annoyed you get when Netflix takes too much time to load a movie and multiply that by 1,000 or so when your virtual jaunt through the rainforest crashes into a sea of pixels. 

And then there are the social and privacy aspects. It’s probably a safe bet that to keep the cost of these products and services down, people are going to have to give up a load of personal data. Sure many are doing that already, but you’ve got to wonder how much more everyone is going to have to surrender to make a low-cost metaverse worthwhile. 

And as far as the social impact, while most people have spent a year in isolation, when they get a chance to go out and interact with actual people, they do it in droves. The news is full of stories of people, young and old, that risked going to large gatherings during the outbreak. Heck, just yesterday (December 16), AMC Theaters said that 1.1 million people went outside to an actual movie theater to watch Spiderman: No Way Home, the second largest box office day in AMC’s history  (The Avengers: Endgame was No. 1). 

So I guess what I’m saying is that for the metaverse to really be worth the hype, it has to deliver on its promises. If it doesn’t, it risks turning consumers off of the concept, or at least substantially delaying its acceptance until it resurfaces years later with another name -- my vote is for  Vitametamegaverse (“It’s So Tasty Too!”). And that’s another thing that this industry has seen before.  ■ 

Another day, another stern letter from legislators to Facebook about their social media practices. 

This letter  — to founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg — came from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), saying the company continues to engage in misleading targeted ad policies.

The legislators pointed out that in congressional testimony, Facebook global head of safety Antigone Davis said that young people could only be targeted on the site based on gender, age or location, but that new research showed that Facebook itself targets ads to people using a machine learning system tied to personal data, including browsing history.

The letter follows a complaint by a coalition of groups last week, led by Reset Australia and Fairplay, which said their analysis found that the company continued to collect teen data “to fuel its ad-delivery system.” While advertisers may not be able to target teens, they said, the company's algorithm's can.

Also: Haugen Hearing: Sen. Blumenthal Calls It Facebook’s Big Tobacco Moment

“Facebook’s announcement that it would limit ad targeting to users under the age of 18 implicitly acknowledged the harms that targeted advertisements pose to young people, and Facebook explicitly stated it was committed to taking a ‘more precautionary approach’ in its advertising practices when it announced its policy change,” the lawmakers said in their letter to Zuckerberg. “Unfortunately, new research suggests that harmful advertising practices on Facebook continue.”

“[I]t’s wrong to say that because we show data in our transparency tools it’s automatically used for ads,” Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said of the coalition’s complaint. "We don’t use data from our advertisers' and partners' websites and apps to personalize ads to people under 18. The reason this information shows up in our transparency tools is because teens visit sites or apps that use our business tools. We want to provide transparency into the data we receive, even if it's not used for ads personalization."

Markey, Trahan and Castor asked for the answers to the following questions by Dec. 13:

1.) “Since Facebook’s announcement [last July] that it will limit ad targeting to users under 18, what specifically has Facebook done to restrict advertisers’ abilities to reach young users?

2.) “Determine in part what commercial content users under 18 on your platform see? If yes, please describe the program in detail.

a. “What types of user data does this system collect or employ?

b. “Does this system collect or employ data from users under the age of 13?

c. “How long has Facebook used this system?

3.) “Will Facebook commit to releasing its algorithmic process for ad targeting to be studied by independent researchers? If not, why not?

4.) “Please describe in detail the ways in which Facebook uses data about the interest and browsing history of users under 18.

5.) “Has Facebook conducted any internal research on the effects of targeted advertising on

users under 18? If so, please provide this research in its entirety.

6.) “Has Facebook communicated with potential advertisers about Facebook’s advertising ‘Delivery System’ and its ability to target users under 18? If so, please describe these communications in detail.

7.) “Has Facebook’s advertising ‘Delivery System’ ever served an advertisement to a user under 18 that promoted weight-loss, nicotine or alcohol use?

8.) “Will Facebook commit to ending targeted advertising to users under 18 on all of its platforms? If not, why not?”

Markey, Castor and Trahan teamed up last April to discourage Facebook from plans to create a kids’ version of its Instagram platform. Those Instagram Kids plans have been under a klieg light in D.C. and elsewhere after whistleblower Frances Haugen turned over internal research to Congress showing the company knew that some young people were hurt by the platform. Facebook countered that the same research found that most kids said they were helped by being on Instagram, adding that it could use both findings to help improve the site.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security Subcommittee, is trying to pressure Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify on Instagram's impact on youth before his panel, saying to date the executive has been evasive and his company dismissive of evidence it puts profits before the health of teen users.

Also Read: At Haugen Hearing, Blumenthal Calls It Big Tech's Big Tobacco Moment

That pressure has been growing in the wake of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony to Congress. Haugen, armed with internal research, told the Senate that the company prioritizes profit over the mental health of its users and knows it is doing so. Facebook says the research shows the company’s Instagram social-media platform is helpful, not harmful, to most teens, and that it used the research to help the minority who said Instagram reinforced their negative body images.

Haugen told Blumenthal and the subcommittee that Facebook was buying its profits with consumer safety and that it intentionally hides documents and repeatedly misleads the public. Until incentives change, she argued, the company won't.

Blumenthal wrote that “as recently as this weekend,” the company was continuing to downplay the reporting about the impact of the research as an “orchestrated ‘gotcha’ campaign.”

The senator said Zuckerberg needed to clear up some inconsistencies between Haugen's testimony and that of Antigone Davis, global head of safety for Facebook, in a separate hearing. There have been multiple hearings on Big Tech's impact on little users.

Blumenthal, in a letter to the CEO dated Wednesday, said Zuckerberg has “doubled down on evasive answers” and “kept hidden” reports on the health of its teenage users, only providing vague plans for action sometime in the future. "Rather than casting baseless aspirations on whistleblowers and journalists, Facebook should be vigorously acting to provide parents with firm commitments for dramatic reforms and direct answers. Sadly, it is not," he says.

Blumenthal wrote that it was “urgent and necessary” for Zuckerberg or Adam Mosseri, who heads up Instagram for Facebook, to testify.

While Facebook has been pushing back on characterizations related to its internal research, it has at the same time blanketed D.C. with ads talking about how it wanted the government to step in and set rules of the road for content moderation.

That effort is in part to head off tough legislation that could break up Big Tech companies or curtail or eliminate their immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from civil liability for most third-party content.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen got an angry and attentive bipartisan audience at a Tuesday (Oct. 5) hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who called it a Big Tobacco moment for Big Tech.

A former Facebook product manager and data scientist, Haugen took documents when she left the company that she said show its algorithms “amplify polarizing and hateful content” for the sake of profit — a motive partly responsible for “tearing societies apart” — and that the company had research showing that but obscured the fact that it is harmful.

Haugen said Facebook was buying its profits with consumer safety and that it intentionally hides documents and repeatedly misleads the public. Until incentives change, she argued, the company won't.

Also Read: Sen. Blumenthal Says Facebook Weaponizes Childhood Suffering

She pointed out that the government took action to curb serious auto accidents (seat belt mandates), against tobacco and against opioid abuse, suggesting taking action now against Facebook was in the same category.

Blumenthal, the subcommittee’s chairman, called the company “morally bankrupt” and called on Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to come before the committee rather than taking a “nothing to see here” approach by “going sailing,” as he suggested Zuckerman had done.

He said if that misleading charge is true, the Federal Trade Commission needs to step in using its authority to pursue false and misleading information.

Also Read: Hill to Hear from Facebook Whistle Blower

Citing last week’s Facebook hearing witness, Antigone Davis, global head of safety for Facebook, who said the research was not a bombshell, Blumenthal said it was the very definition of a bombshell and that Big Tech was having its Big Tobacco moment, the moment when research shows they knew its product was harmful, but concealed that knowledge for the sake of profit. As Connecticut’s attorney general, Blumenthal had led that state’s action against Big Tobacco and remembered the moment when he had the files that showed tobacco knew its product caused cancer.

Ranking member Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said Facebook abused consumers’ privacy, did not respect its users, invaded the privacy of children, and was in violation of federal law — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the parent Senate Commerce Committee, said Congress must act against powerful tech companies to protect children and the public at large. He called their product addictive, and agreed that legislators on both sides of the aisle are concerned. Wicker said he had talked to an opinion maker just before the hearing who said “the tech gods had been demystified.” Wicker agreed, and said that the hearing was furthering that process.

Both Blumenthal and Blackburn suggested they would be looking to narrow Big Tech's immunity from civil liability for third-party content on their platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. 

Haugen said the way to modify Sec. 230 is to exempt platform decisions about their algorithms. Those platforms may arguably not have the control over third-party content, but she said they have 100% control over their algorithms. 

But while there have been ongoing bipartisan differences between what is considered particularly sensitive data and how that should be protected, Facebook’s research revelations could potentially be the tipping point that brings Democrats and Republicans together over a common “enemy.” That certainly seemed to the the case Tuesday,

Blackburn predicted that this Congress would be the one where online privacy legislation finally passed, something both sides have been talking about for almost a decade.

Also Read: Facebook Whistleblower's Identity Revealed on ‘60 Minutes’

The time has come for action on privacy legislation, agreed Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), "and I think you are the catalyst," she told Haugen.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said he agreed it was time to bridge the partisan differences and pass bipartisan privacy legislation. Blumenthal said he thought the differences were minor, particularly in the face of what they had learned about Facebook. Joined by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) they agreed it was time to get to work and get it done.

Haugen revealed her identity on CBS’s newsmagazine 60 Minutes, which drew a strong rebuttal from Facebook. Haugen told the committee she had revealed herself at great personal risk because she believed there was still time to address the Facebook issues. Blumenthal assured her that the committee would do what it could to protect her from any retaliation.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), historically one of the strongest advocates for children's online protections and a primary author of COPPA, called Haugen a 21st Century American Hero.

Markey warned that Facebook lobbyists would he making visits after the hearing telling Congress it can't act.

Facebook took aim at Haugen's authority on the subjects on which she testified, and again said they supported some regulation of Big Tech.

“Today, a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives – and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question," said Ena Pietsch, director of policy communications. "We don’t agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about. Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act.”

A trio of powerful Democratic senators are pressing Facebook on its decision not to let researchers at New York University's Ad Observatory Project to its platform, which Facebook said was out of privacy concerns.

The university is studying political advertising on Facebook, including finding what the senators called "a lack of transparency in how advertisers target political ads online on Facebook."

Also Read: Hawley Says Facebook Should Scrap Political Ad Ban

The senators expressed their surprise at the move in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dated Aug. 6.

"The opaque and unregulated online advertising platforms that social media companies maintain have allowed a hotbed of disinformation and consumer scams to proliferate, and we need to find solutions to those problems,” they told Zuckerberg, adding "it is imperative that Facebook allow credible academic researchers and journalists like those involved in the Ad Observatory project to conduct independent research that will help illuminate how the company can better tackle misinformation, disinformation, and other harmful activity that is proliferating on its platforms.”

Co-signing the letter were Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.).

They want Zuckerberg to answer a bunch of questions related to the move, including how many researcher and journalist accounts were terminated or disabled in 2021, why the accounts were terminated, and what it meant when it said it had terminated the accounts because it didn't want the research to "compromise people's privacy."

While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is already a leader in countering misinformation online, he is calling on Congress to condition online platforms' Sec. 230 immunity from civil liability for third party content moderation on demonstrable systems to identify and remove harmful content.

That is according to his prepared testimony for a March 25 hearing in the House Energy & Commerce Committee titled "Disinformation Nation: Social Media's Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation." He would only apply that to smaller platforms, he said, explaining that had Facebook been hit in its infancy with a bunch of lawsuits over content it could have been a death blow.

Also Read: Big Tech Defends Sec. 230 from Expected Hill Hits

The Facebook CEO begins his testimony by expressing his condolences to the family of the Capitol police officer who died following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, saying Facebook was "committed to assisting law enforcement in bringing the insurrectionists to justice."

One of the knocks on social media is that it provided a platform for plotting that insurrection.

"I believe we do more to address misinformation than any other company," he said.

But he also clearly signaled that Congress had a role as well, or perhaps understanding the bipartisan momentum for limiting or even eliminating Sec. 230 immunity, wanted to promote a self-regulatory version of reform Facebook could live with.

First, Zuckerberg outlined why he said Facebook was a leader in weeding out harmful content.

Also Read: Rep. Cicciline Says Big Tech Power Will Be Curbed

"Our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy prohibits content calling for or advocating violence, and we ban organizations and individuals that proclaim a violent mission," he said. "We remove language that incites or facilitates violence, and we ban Groups that proclaim a hateful and violent mission from having a presence on our apps. We also remove content that represents, praises, or supports them. We believe this policy has long been the broadest and most aggressive in the industry."

As to the type of activity that surrounded the insurrection, he said: "We remove Groups that represent QAnon, even if they contain no violent content. And we do not allow militarized social movements—such as militias or groups that support and organize violent acts amid protests—to have a presence on our platform."

But given all that, he said, it was understandable that people all over the political spectrum 1) "want to know that companies are taking responsibility for combatting unlawful content and activity on their platforms," and 2) "want to know that when platforms remove harmful content, they are doing so fairly and transparently."

He said that was why he was advocating for "thoughtful reform of Section 230..."

Zuckerberg said Sec. 230 had created the conditions for a thriving internet that empowered billions to express themselves, adding that its principles are as relevant today as ever. But given the dramatic changes in that internet, he said the section would benefit from that thoughtful reform. 

He said Congress could make platforms' liability protection for certain unlawful content "conditional on companies’ ability to meet best practices to combat the spread of this content." He said that instead of granting immunity, companies would hear it by demonstrating "that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it."

But he also said platforms should not be held if a "particular piece of content" slips through, saying that would be "impractical for platforms with billions of posts per day," but they should be responsible for having an "adequate" system in place.

He said what qualified as adequate could be proportionate to the size of the platform and determined by a third party who would ensure that fair practices are clear and companies understand how to implement them.

He said those practices should not extend to "unrelated issues" like encryption or privacy, which he said are for another day's debate.

Also Read: Senate Democrats Target Sec. 230

He did not spell out how Congress could bring more transparency, accountability and oversight to the content moderation process, but said companies should get to make and enforce their own rules about what content is harmful but legal, though he conceded that would not help companies draw the line on tough calls about conversations on the platform. "While we work hard to prevent abuse of our platform, conversations online will always reflect the conversations taking place in living rooms, on television, and in text messages and phone calls across the country. Our society is deeply divided, and we see that on our services too," he said.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to be a popular pen pal for legislators concerned about its treatment of ad and web content.

In a letter Monday (March 8), more than two dozen House Energy & Commerce Committee Democrats called on him for some answers about the social media giant's ad practices after reports showed it had promoted "violence and disinformation both before and after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection."

Also Read: NAB Faces Down Facebook Compromise

They pointed to reports that Facebook ran ads for gun accessories and protective equipment alongside content that "amplified election misinformation" as well as news about the insurrection. "Targeting ads in this way is dangerous and has the potential to encourage acts of violence,” they wrote. 

They conceded that Facebook had temporarily banned ads that promoted weapons' accessories and protective equipment but said it needed to do more. 

“With more than 100 million daily Facebook users in the United States, it is paramount that Facebook take responsibility for where it places advertisements and what those advertisements promote,” they told Zuckerberg. “Furthermore, Facebook should inform advertisers about surrounding content, and make the necessary changes to guarantee that Facebook and companies’ ad dollars are not further supporting or sowing seeds of hate and distrust throughout the country.”

To help Zuckerberg with the "more" he needs to do, the legislators wanted answers to the following questions:

• "What steps does Facebook plan to take to ensure that advertisements for weapons or other tactical military equipment are not targeted in a manner that jeopardizes public safety?
• "What procedures and processes does Facebook have in place for reviewing the audience of these types of advertisements?
• "Does Facebook have dedicated staff to monitor and approve the targeting of advertisements for weapons or military equipment on its platform?
• "Are companies whose advertisements appear on Facebook aware or notified that their ads are being placed next to content that includes misinformation, disinformation, violence, hate speech, or voter suppression?
• "Have any companies expressed concerns regarding the placement of their advertisements next to content that includes misinformation, disinformation, violence, hate speech, or voter suppression."

Also Read: Facebook Wants Comprehensive Privacy Law

Signing the letter were House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), and Reps. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif,), Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Marc Veasey (D-Tex.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), Donald McEachin (D-Va.), Lisa Blunt-Rochester (D-Del.), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Kathleen M. Rice (D-N.Y.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), and Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas).

Some of the same legislators fired off a letter to Zuckerberg two weeks ago on a similar subject, seeking answers to questions about the insurrection and disinformation, also based on a news reports.

House Democrats are accusing Facebook of knowingly "allowing extremist content and groups to grow" despite reportedly knowing through internal reviews that the platform's policies and recommendations were to blame for rapid dissemination of extremism and disinformation.

Also Read: House Dems Pressure Distributors On Channel Choices

The claim came in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from the Democratic leadership of the Energy & Commerce Committee, seeking answers to questions and access to internal documents.

The letter came a day before an Energy & Commerce subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on traditional media's role in promoting disinformation and extremism.

Signing on to the letter were Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), and Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee Chair Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)

The legislators cited a report in the Wall Street Journal from back in May 2020, suggesting the company had been on notice long before the Capitol insurrection.

“[The] deadly attack on the Capitol laid bare the dire consequences of hyperpolarization and extremism in our current political discourse – much of which is occurring on your platform,” the House members told Zuckerberg. “With more than 3 billion monthly users across different services, Facebook must play a leading role in lessening the divide and lowering the temperature. To that end, the Committee is interested in understanding more about Facebook’s research on divisive content and user behavior, the reported presentations and recommendations made to Facebook executives and their actions in response, and the steps Facebook leadership has taken to reduce polarization on its platform.”

Also Read: FCC's Carr Says House Dems Are Trying to Censor Newsrooms

The quartet of subcommittee chairs also sought information and answers to the following questions:

1. "When and why Facebook first began conducting research into divisive content and behavior on its platform;
2. "Whether in the course of any internal studies or analyses Facebook uncovered any evidence or reached any findings that would confirm or suggest its platform, algorithms, or other tools exacerbate divisiveness or polarization;
3. "Details on the Common Ground task force and Integrity Teams, as well as the review process that led to the two teams’ recommendations, and whether and how Facebook addressed or adopted such recommendations;
4. "Details on the Eat Your Veggies process, including the names and role of each person involved in the process;
5. "Copies of the 2016, 2018, and 2020 presentations warning of the rise of extremist content and the platform’s role in promoting it;
6. "All documents and communications referring or relating to those presentations, any recommendations, suggestions, or proposals by the Common Ground task force or any Integrity Teams regarding divisiveness, polarization, or user behavior, and the Eat Your Veggies process."

The Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee took its turn taking Big Tech to the woodshed in a hearing Tuesday (Nov. 17) entitled "Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election" that included threats of breaking up companies and/or heavily regulating them.

Republicans have been focused on what they see as Silicon Valley's censorship of conservative speech, including the President's. Democrats are also concerned about Big Tech, but see edge providers as too lenient on what they see as hate speech and disinformation, some arguing the companies have been cowed by Republican attacks to back off flagging content.

Related: Rep. Cicciline Calls on Twitter to Suspend Trump Account

On hand, virtually, were Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said they were doing their best to moderate content while balancing free speech and privacy.

Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the President's biggest supporters, and ranking member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) set the tone of the hearing from the outset. 

Graham said he was concerned that social media had addictive properties, like tobacco, that posed a health risk, in this case a mental health risk, particularly to young people constantly connected to the Web and from companies that try to maximize that engagement.

Related: Social Net CEO's Get Senate Grilling

He cited studies showing links between social media and heightened depression and anxiety--Zuckerberg said those studies were not conclusive--and said social media was designed to sustain attention and engagement, an addictive mix akin to a slot machine, and gamified social interactions to keep them going.

Asked if he agreed his platform was addictive, Zuckerberg said it was definitely not designed to be so.

Blumenthal was even harsher on his witnesses. 

Sen. Blumenthal said that Facebook and Twitter are terrifying tools of persuasion and manipulation, with power exceeding that of the old robber barons as they strip mine data and promote hate speech and voter suppression. He said the platforms had taken baby steps to address the problems, but that their destructive, incendiary misinformation was still a scourge, one that needed addressing via antitrust enforcement.

He told them their platforms had weaponized child predators and violent white supremacists, setting back civil rights protections, consumer protections, and competition. 

Both agreed that there needed to be substantive changes to the Sec. 230 immunity social media platforms enjoy from civil liability over how they moderate third party content, content that looks a lot like editorial decision-making to some Republicans still unhappy with Twitter's flagging of the President's tweets and the blocking of a story in the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

Related: Justice Unveils Legislation to Regulate Social Media

In fact, Dorsey suggested that how it handled the Hunter Biden story was essentially the reason for the hearing, and that it was only because the story featured hacked materials and it has a policy of taking down posts based on hacked materials.

Graham said he would prefer that companies come up with their own best practices, including transparency on how they decide what to take up and leave down and who is deciding it. He also said that Twitter and Facebook had in the most part been a boon to society and communications.

Blumenthal was more focused on strong government action up to and including breaking up Big Tech companies and potentially eliminating most of Sec. 230's liability protections.

Related: Trump Tackles the Edge

He said he didn't want the government deciding what content to take up or down, but when you have companies that have more power than governments or traditional media outlets, he said, "something has to give. Sec. 230 needs to be changed.

Blumenthal said he agreed that change must come. Even both Dorsey and Zuckerberg said they also agreed some change to Sec. 230 was necessary, with Zuckerberg more amenable to the government helping determine the best way forward of content moderation.

But while Graham and Republicans were concerned about partisan flagging and blocking content, Blumenthal said they needed to do more of that, and that when it came to what he saw as voter suppression and disinformation (like voter fraud theories), was their civic responsibility.

Related: Group Seeks Federal Protection for Journalists

Blumenthal said he feared the hearing was meant to bully the platforms from taking more responsible action by threatening Sec. 230 reform. He said the hearing title was a misnomer, and that what the majority called censorship was avoiding amplifying disinformation, some of it dangerous.

But Blumenthal agreed that change was coming, including to Sec. 230 and antitrust enforcement. 

Sen. Blumenthal said he hoped there would be further hearings on privacy and antitrust and Sec. 230 with Big Tech. Graham agreed that would be a good idea, though if the Republicans retain the gavel, that will be up to the new Judiciary chairman, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

Senate Republicans appear to be continuing to put the pressure on Big Tech during the lame duck session, with a couple of the biggest names in tech testifying this week.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday (Nov. 17) on "Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election."

Related: Minority Report Finds Big Tech Threatens Local News

Scheduled to testify, according to the committee, are Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Those are the same two executives who testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in advance of the election, talking about, among other things, how they would flag misinformation. Twitter has been particularly active, flagging multiple tweets by President Trump related to the election and his allegations, to date unsubstantiated, of widespread fraud.

“Because of protections provided by federal law, digital services can take action against a variety of objectionable online behaviors, including everything from harassment, to spam and disinformation to promoting self-harm," said Computer & Communications Industry Association president Matt Schruers of the upcoming hearing. "These protections are critical to services that allow people to connect with family and engage in economic activity online, particularly during a pandemic. If consumers disagree with moderation decisions that a particular service makes, there are a wealth of competitors to choose from.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously Thursday (Oct. 22) to issue subpoenas to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

The two are already scheduled to testify at a hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee next week on Sec. 230 but Judiciary wants to do its own delving into the issue of online content moderation, according to that Committee's chairman, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Related: Big Tech Bigwigs to Testify Before Senate Commerce

Initially, Graham had signaled only a subpoena to Dorsey--Twitter has been particularly in the spotlight for flagging some of President Trump's tweets as misleading or potentially inciting violence, then more recently for its blocking of New York Post stories about Hunter Biden--but Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked that Zuckerberg be included.

The vote's unanimity was all on the Republican side, however, because the Democrats had boycotted the business meeting due to the item preceding the subpoena vote--on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

But Graham said he was proceeding with the subpoena vote anyway since he understood that some of the Democrats also wanted to hear from the execs. He said it would "hopefully give us some leverage to secure their testimony." Unlike Commerce, Judiciary witnesses are sworn in before they testify similar to a trial.

On news of the Vote, House Republicans, who don't control the gavel, again urged the Democratic leadership of the Energy & Commerce Committee to force Big Tech CEOs to testify on that side of the Capitol.

“Once again, we call on Chairman Pallone to join with us to protect the integrity of our elections and stop the censorship of political speech," said ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Communications Subcommittee ranking member Bob Latta (R-Ohio), and Consumer Protection Subcommittee ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). "It’s long past time for the Energy and Commerce Committee to compel the testimony of the CEOs of the powerful tech platforms."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reverse its decision not to accept new political advertising in the week before the November election.

Facebook announced the ad ban earlier this month.

"We're going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign," Zuckerberg said at the time. "It's important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims. So in the week before the election, we won't accept new political or issue ads," he said. "Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinize them."

But Hawley argues that the ban could suppress voter turnout and result in an overly broad blackout of ads related to social issues.

"In a culture in which virtually every issue—from knitting and yoga to sushi and young-adult fiction—has become aggressively politicized, any topic can be deemed ‘sensitive’ in the right context," he wrote Zuckerberg. "Given Facebook’s sweeping powers to shape the news and information that Americans receive, clarity on Facebook’s understanding of these terms is critical.”

Hawley wants an answer by Sept. 23 to the question of how Facebook is defining a political or issue ad and whether "news or opinion outlets will be allowed to promote stories related to the election, and whether advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood or NARAL will be permitted to advertise on Facebook during the blackout."

Some Facebook critics were hardly reassured by its announcement Thursday (Sept. 3) that it would not run new political or issue ads in the week before the November election, branding it a PR stunt and essentially a nothing burger.

Women's group Ultraviolet minced no words, calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a "menace to democracy."

Of the announced political ad moratorium, which Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post, the group suggested that a week before election day is effectively a non sequitur.

Related: Facebook Won't Run New Political Ads Week Before Election

“Voting starts in North Carolina tomorrow," pointed out Ultraviolet executive director Shaunna Thomas. "Election Day isn’t in two months, it’s tomorrow and every day after, which means voters in that state and many others that vote early will be subject to months of dishonest ads on Facebook’s platform. For women and people of color running for office, these months of unchecked, untrue racist and sexist attacks are especially damaging."

“If Facebook were serious about stopping the threats of disinformation and election interference it would be fact-checking and removing political ads, in addition to intentionally deceptive posts, that proliferate across the platform," Thomas said. "Because the real truth that Facebook refuses to acknowledge is that ads are just a small part of the massive problem at Facebook."

Liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America was equally unimpressed.

“Facebook’s new ad policy announcement is designed to fool the media and the public into thinking the company is taking disinformation seriously," said the group's president, Angelo Carusone. "[T]his new policy is pointless - and may even do more harm than good. Makes no mistake - you can still spread misinformation with political ads on Facebook, you just can’t do it with NEW ads just ONE week before Election Day. According to this new policy, political ads that have at least one impression prior to Oct. 27th, can be rerun and re-targeted to new groups during the week of Election Day.  

“Facebook’s policy will only further empower those seeking to do harm, while weakening the ability of outside forces to counteract attacks and misinformation, something that has proven necessary given Facebook’s weak enforcement."

Back in June, and under pressure from Washington, civil rights groups, advertisers and others, Facebook announced it is going to start moderating political content more closely, but Zuckerberg and Facebook have been reluctant to take down political speech.

Facebook, which has taken flak in D.C. over the use of its platform for 2016 Russian election disinformation, said it won't accept any new political ads for a week before the upcoming election, though ads running before that time can continue to run.

That is one of what CEO Mark Zuckerberg characterized in a Facebook post as additional steps to insure a secure election. 

Another is to flag any claim that "lawful methods of voting will lead to fraud."

It was Twitter's flagging of the president's claim about mail-in-balloting which is legal, leads to massive voter fraud that most believe helped spur his executive order to regulate social media's moderation of content. The order suggested such flagging turned a neutral platform into a speaker that should lose Sec. 230 immunity from liability over content on its platform.

Related: Trump Threatens to Close Down Social Media

"We're going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign, Zuckerberg said in the post. "It's important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims. So in the week before the election, we won't accept new political or issue ads," he said. "Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinize them."

Zuckerberg said the platform was taking steps to "connect people to authoritative information, and reducing the risks of post-election confusion."

In addition to the political ad moratorium just before the election, those are: 

1. "We’ll remove posts that claim that people will get COVID-19 if they take part in voting, and we’ll attach a link to authoritative information about the coronavirus to posts that might use COVID-19 to discourage voting.

2. "We will attach an informational label to content that seeks to delegitimize the outcome of the election or discuss the legitimacy of voting methods, for example, by claiming that lawful methods of voting will lead to fraud. 

3. "If any candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the final results are in, we’ll add a label to their posts directing people to the official results from Reuters and the National Election Pool."

Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), ranking member of the House Communications Subcommittee, said Congress needs to get data privacy legislation passed ASAP.  

"We have to have a uniform standard out there so that people know what is going on," he said in an interview for C-SPAN's Communicators series. Lighting a fire under that effort, he suggested, is the fact that California's tough new privacy law goes into in less than six months. 

He pointed out that after Congress' traditional August recess, there are only about 40 "hard" working days to get legislation done. 

"We are up against that Dec. 31 date," he said. "If we don't get something done," and done right," not only will there be the California law, but other states will start doing the same thing in the absence of national legislation. 

He said that legislation was important for companies so they wouldn't face a patchwork of different standards, but also for consumers so they will know what their rights are. 

Latta was asked by asked by reporter Ashley Gold of The Information about legislation in the context of this week's $5 billion Federal Trade Commission settlement with Facebook, which drew a number of similar comments about the need for general national privacy standards, particularly since the FTC chairman's response to criticism that its fine and conditions were too lenient, said it was the best they could do with limited authority and that Congress needed to step in to give it more authority. 

The FTC is an enforcement agency. In fact, the Facebook fine and conditions mostly had to do with the company not living up to an earlier settlement with the FTC, which is primarily an enforcement agency with limited rulemaking and fining authority.

Latta referred back to when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the House Energy & Commerce Committee. He said Zuckerberg had talked about being optimistic and idealistic when he started the company in a dorm room. Latta said he had written a note to himself on a copy of Zuckerberg's testimony as he listened to it: "But not realistic." 

Latta suggested that realistic now meant transparency, so users know what data is being collected and what it is used for. 

Asked what his "non-negotiables" were in such a bill, Latta said Democrats were currently working on the text of a bill, text he had not seen, and that they needed to have a sit-down on that, but declined to say what he would have to have. 

Latta was asked if Big Tech was too big. Latta said these were companies whose products and services a large number of the American people liked to use. 

He signaled he was ready to rush to "break things up." But he did want the committee to examine the issue, "getting the facts" before deciding whether something needs to be done about Big Tech "in the future." 

The Trump Administration is opening an antitrust investigation into Facebook and other tech giants. Latta said that it is the agency's job to determine if those companies were operating within the laws on the books.  

One argument by Big Tech critics is that they built up anticompetitive monopolies through serial purchases of smaller companies that, individually. did not raise antitrust red flags.  

DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim has said that it is not size that necessarily matters, but how companies used that size.  

The Latta episode of The Communicators airs Saturday, July 27, at 6:30 p.m. on C-SPAN and Monday, July 29, at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on C-SPAN2.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was not assuaged by Facebook's lengthy explanation of the steps it takes and is taking to address privacy issues related to Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Facebook (actually VP, U.S. public policy and former Republican FCC Chair Kevin Martin), was responding to Hawley's May 13 letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg questioning Facebook's new commitment to a "privacy first" future for its platforms.

Hawley said he thought Facebook's pledge masked a plan to "capture and subvert the privacy revolution that threatents your business model" by way of an "empty public relations victory."

Related: Hawley Stakes Out Big Tech

Martin answered a series of questions from the Senator, the bottom line of which were that the "new" Facebook privacy platform would be rooted in "creating spaces for private interactions, reducing permanence, encryption, safety, interoperability, and secure data storage."

Martin said that was a work in progress that would take "several years."

Hawley saw it quite differently Wednesday in publishing Martin's response, saying the company was standing firm on its "right to snoop."

Hawley, a freshman senator, has been arguably the harshest critic of Big Tech since joining Congress in Jaunary, though he is hardly alone in taking Facebook and Zuckerberg to the Capitol Hill woodshed.

“I am frankly shocked by Facebook’s response. I thought they’d swear off the creepier possibilities I raised. But instead, they doubled down,” said Hawley. “If you share a link in encrypted messenger with a friend who clicks it, Facebook reserves the right to use cookies to figure out what that link was and what you two might have been discussing in your encrypted chat. If you send a roommate your rent money in encrypted messenger, Facebook reserves the right to use the payment metadata to figure out you might live together. And they call this ‘encrypted’ private messaging."

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) had more than one bone to pick with Facebook this week, writing CEO Mark Zuckerberg Friday (Feb. 22) seeking an explanation of Burmese groups it had banned from its platform, which came after he had called for an FTC investigation into complaints about Facebook in-app purchases.

Markey, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asking Zuckerberg to explain why Facebook had banned four "ethnic armed groups"-–the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA)."

He said that those groups involved with the attempt to bring peace to that country. Markey acknowledged Facebook's efforts to combat online hate speech in Burma that has led to atrocities in the conflict, but that this ban "risks undermining efforts to promote ethnic reconciliation."

That is because, says Markey, "[b]anning the pages of these armed groups, which rely predominantly on Facebook to communicate with outside audiences, would cut off their external communications. It would prevent these groups from engaging with ethnic civil society, government negotiators, international observers (including the United States) facilitating the peace process, and international humanitarian groups accessing areas under their control, isolating them from any national reconciliation efforts.”

He also says that Facebook's "unclear" explanation of the ban "opens the door to serious misinterpretation" of its hate speech policy.

Markey wants that cleared up with answers to a bunch of questions (by March 1), including why those groups and not the Burmese military or government or other armed ethnic groups were banned and who made the ultimate decision to ban the groups.

The letter is an example of the competing pressures on social media platforms in Washington both to become more involved in content calls and not to censor or micromanage speech.

A coalition of groups have filed a complaint against Facebook with the FTC over what it says is the company's collection of children's personal information without obtaining the requisite parental permission.

The complaint is leveled against the Messenger Kids app, a social media platform for children as young as five.

The app does have a parental consent mechanism, but the groups say it does not meet the requirements of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) because it is not "reasonably Calculated" to make sure the permission giving permission is actually the parent.

Related: Senators Grill Facebook's Zuckerberg on New Messenger Kids App

They say they tested the app and any "fictional" parent can set up the app and immediately approve a child's account without proof of identity.

They also say the the privacy policy is "incomplete and vague."

The complaint was spearheaded by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and drawn up by the Communications & Technology Law Clinic at the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center.

CCFC earlier this year asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to pull the plug on the app.

“While evidence shows that excessive social media use negatively impacts the wellbeing of children and teens, Facebook is trying to get kids hooked at the tender age of five,” said CCFC executive director Josh Golin in a statement.

Other signatories to the complaint included the Consumer Federation of America and the Parents Television Council.

Related: Markey Pans Facebook Answers on COPPA and Kids

The complaint is just the latest volley at the social media giant, which has had a rough time in Washington over the Cambridge Analytica third-party info sharing debacle and social media's role in Russian election meddling and alleged bias against conservative speech.

Facebook's release of the app last fall drew immediate scrutiny on the Hill

Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to company CEO Mark Zuckerberg Dec. 7 saying they were "concerned about where sensitive information collected through this app could end up and for what purpose it could be used,” the Senators told Zuckerberg in a letter. “Facebook must take heightened care in ensuring the company creates a safe and controlled environment for its young users, complete with parental consent.”

Facebook has said it talked to parents, the PTA and parenting experts before giving kids something to make it easier to connect, but with parental control.

The tablet and smartphone app allows parents to set up one-one-one or group video chats with contacts they approve of and includes a library of" kid-appropriate and specially chosen GIFs, frames, stickers, masks and drawing tools."

But the senators, both members of the Commerce Committee, which oversees communications issues, wanted to make sure that the app complies with COPPA, which Markey helped draft.

CCFC and the others say it doesn't.

Embattled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says fixing the site is going to take years, and it is going to take some hard tradeoffs.

That is according to a Facebook post Friday (Sept. 7).

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was in Washington this week testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on issues like privacy, data sharing and election meddling.

Zuckerberg said job one is "rebuilding all of our content enforcement systems to proactively find harmful content rather than wait for people to flag issues," but he said that job will take at least three years. The good news is that the process began in 2017, he said.

That said, Zuckerberg wrote that he expected 2018 will end "on a significantly better trajectory."

Related: CWA Says 'Break up Facebook'

Zuckerberg tried to convey the enormity of the task, "whether that's defending against election interference by nation states, protecting our community from abuse and harm, or making sure people have control of their information and are comfortable with how it's used."

Zuckerberg has taken heat in Washington for alleged anti-conservative bias, for failing to better protect user data from third-party misuse, and the use of Facbook by foreign actors to meddle with U.S. elections, among other criticisms.

Related: House E&C Hammers Facebook

"What I've learned so far is that when you build services that are used by billions of people across countries and cultures, you will see all of the good humanity is capable of, and people will try to abuse those services in every way possible," he said, adding: "It is our responsibility to amplify the good and mitigate the bad."

Zuckerberg said the hard decisions about how to do that "involve difficult tradeoffs between principles we value deeply," decisions that clearly take time and input.

Related: Sen. Markey Calls for Facebook Crackdown

For example, he said, "encryption increases privacy and security for individuals but makes it more difficult to fight misinformation and hate at scale," or "requiring verification for ads and pages makes election interference more difficult, but it also creates roadblocks for dissidents and smaller, less well-funded groups engaging in those debates."

"We're taking this work very seriously -- and I've spent a lot of time talking to outside experts to get their perspective," he said. "I look forward to sharing more of what we've been thinking about soon."

Zuckerberg said he will post a series of updates over the next three months on various what are in effect self-regulatory efforts. Those will come as the Federal Trade Commission over that same time frame is holding months-long hearings on whether it needs to change its enforcement approach in a high-tech age, including potentially regulating edge provider activity.

Facebook stock plunged after the social media behemoth reported revenue growth below expectations, which coupled with recent scandals over mishandled user information apparently was too much for investors to bear, sending shares down more than 20% in after-hours trading.

Facebook has been battered by revelations over the past several months that it had mishandled the personal information of its users and ignored the unchecked spread of fabricated news. But investors really got antsy after Facebook chief financial officer David Wehner said the slowed sales growth would likely continue for the rest of the year.

Facebook shares, which hit a record high on Wednesday, plunged after the quarterly results were announced. At one point the stock was down 24% in after-hours trading, its biggest decline ever and shedding roughly $130 billion in market cap in just two hours. The stock was down 19% ($43.39 each) to $174.11 per share at 7:35 p.m. July 25.

Sales for the quarter were $13.23 billion, below the $13.3 billion Wall Street had anticipated and the first time the company had made such a miss since 2015.

User growth also slowed – Facebook said 2.23 billion people logged in at least once per month in the period, behind the 2.25 billion analysts expected and the slowest growth rate for the social media giant ever. Daily user growth also slowed in the period, up 11% but less than the 1.49 billion expected.

It has been a rough year for the company – CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of Congress in April after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, prompting calls for stiffer regulation.

In a research note, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said the declines weren’t a surprise.

“[T] he advertising industry – and digital advertising no less – has limits to growth, which we think is the primary factor constraining Facebook’s revenue opportunity,” Wieser said in a research note. “Deceleration such as management guided towards suggests that while the company is still growing at a fast clip, the days of 30%+ growth are numbered.” 

WASHINGTON — Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was shown the Capitol Hill woodshed last week, and edge providers may never be the same.

“U.S. policymakers were so enamored by Silicon Valley over the last decade that they turned a blind eye to their abuses,” Roslyn Layton, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said of what has become a bipartisan push for privacy protections aimed at edge providers.

Related: Law Limits Cable’s Use of Customer Information

Edge providers, which include Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, often referred to as FANG, use a customer’s internet service provider to deliver their service.

But whether they are “abuses” or, as Zuckerberg suggested in his testimony, online tools developed for good but hijacked by the bad guys, the eyes of Washington lawmakers are open and looking toward possible regulation or legislation to give online users — that is, most of us — some degree of control over where our personal data is going and what it is being used for.

Privacy on the Edge: Legislators' Questions

Zuckerberg made clear that Facebook does not sell data to advertisers, but it does depend on targeting ads based on user data to bring in the $40 billion in business it did last year.

Expect to hear the phrase “opt-in” a lot in the coming days, as policymakers try to come up with the best way to give users control of information. Ahead of the hearing, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced the Privacy Bill of Rights bill with opt-in for everyone.

Opting In to Opt-In

ISPs have said they can live with a regime in which customers pro-actively opt in to share personal info, as long as it applied to companies like Facebook and Google, as well as Comcast and Charter Communications.

Zuckerberg said he also agreed in principle, though he frequently used terms like “generally agree,” “the details matter” or something “useful to discuss” to avoid definitive endorsements of any particular legislative or regulatory approach. He did signal that he thinks regulation is inevitable — likely one reason he was talking not about whether there would be regulation, but making sure it was the “right” regulation.

Zuckerberg tried to draw a distinction between ISPs and the edge — he said it is lack of ISP competition versus choice in platforms — and suggested regulation should take that into account. The Facebook CEO said he certainly did not think of his company as having a monopoly. But he was not getting a lot of agreement from the legislators in attendance, most of whom are on Facebook and rely on it to reach constituents.

Facebook and others are now tasked with figuring out how to make terms of service contracts clearer, another issue that drew a lot of attention last week and multiple calls for transparency.

Related:(Law) Schooling Facebook | Facebook Boosts Political Ad Disclosures

The scrutiny of Zuckerberg from both parties in both houses of Congress certainly felt like the final crash of a drumbeat that has been building, fueled by data breaches, fake news, election meddling and third-party monetization of online information.

ISPs and others have said there needs to be a shift in the attitude of Washington toward the garage innovators that have long since morphed into data-collecting behemoths that threaten privacy like never before.

Reckoning, and Rules, Draw Closer

That day of D.C. reckoning for Facebook and other edge providers seems close at hand, the Facebook chairman’s serial apologies notwithstanding. Perhaps the larger question, in the face of European regulators who have moved much more aggressively, is: Can a Congress so stifled by partisan rancor pass any meaningful legislation soon?

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) cited a long history of mea culpas, which is why she said self-regulation just won’t work. Those included apologies from 2003, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2017 and 2018. On the subject of the protections that Zuckerberg said Facebook was supplying users at the point of decision, Schakowsky asked, “Who is going to protect us from Facebook?”

Zuckerberg spent almost 10 hours over two hearings on April 11 and 12 apologizing for breaching the trust of Facebook users, saying the company had taken many steps to correct the problems with data sharing and third-party access to data, and outlined some of the changes it has made. But that rang hollow with many legislators.

They pointed to the company’s 20-year, 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission, in which it promised to give users notice and opt-in control of sharing of their data with third parties.

Zuckerberg said he did not think that access to data by Cambridge Analytica — the data firm controlled by right-wing donor and President Donald Trump supporter Robert Mercer — in violation of Facebook’s policies violated that decree, but he did say it was a mistake not to inform the FTC about the incident. Reports in The New York Times and U.K. newspapers The Observer and The Guardian cited documents which said Cambridge Analytica used data improperly obtained from Facebook to build voter profiles.

The FTC is currently investigating Facebook over that incident, as are U.K. authorities.

Zuckerberg, sounding like an ISP CEO pitching a voluntary network neutrality regime, argued last week for voluntary measures to address the company’s various issues, like mistakes in taking down conservative and political speech that did not violate its community standards, the weaponization of the platform by foreign election-meddlers, better informing viewers of how their data was being used, and more. But he also did not rule out regulation.

Seeking the Right Rules

Zuckerberg said he was not opposed to new privacy regulations, but that they had to be the “right regulation.” He seemed at least open to the possibility of a law requiring user opt-in permission for sharing their data with third parties, but said the details of such legislation were important.

And while Republicans are generally on the side of voluntary industry initiatives, this issue could be an exception.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana put it bluntly: “Mr. Zuckerberg, I come in peace. I don’t want to vote to have to regulate Facebook. But, by God, I will.”

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) told Fox News Channel that he wasn’t ruling out calling Twitter and Google to Washington for hearings, and sought input from Zuckerberg as to which other tech CEOs should get an invitation to testify in Washington.

Republicans are especially concerned that the left political leanings of many Silicon Valley executives translate to a bias against conservative views, a point that Zuckerberg conceded was valid. That is why some Republicans are not ready to push Facebook and others to take more control of their online content.

Just how Facebook’s new artificial intelligence algorithms decide what hate speech is, and what news to place in user’s News Feeds, is a topic of ongoing discussion, but only one of many raised by Washington’s new interest in drilling down into the edge business model.

The Facebook CEO told Congress that examples of conservative speech being censored were mistakes that had been corrected. He said mistakes involving liberal speech were also made, but that there was no directive from corporate to weed out any speech based on its politics, only on whether it was hateful or threatening. There, too, Facebook could do a better job, Zuckerberg said.

But “we’ll do better” solutions to problems involving billions of interactions among billions of people are unlikely to stem the tide.

Regulation and legislation are now clearly on the table for the Big Four edge providers — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon — as Americans come to the realization of just how much of their data is being harvested and shared online. There was talk last week about hauling Twitter and Google before Congress as well.

ISPs have been arguing that any legislation or regulation of the ’net needs to include the edge, which makes more money off of, and collects far more data, from users. That argument has clearly found an audience.

If the current climate in Washington is any gauge, the death of privacy is a hot-button issue, and fueling the outrage in this partisan city are details that the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data-mining issue involved selling the information to the Trump presidential campaign.

But it goes beyond privacy to ad dollars, the ones Facebook and others are attracting with all those billions of eyeballs, and the data being mined and monetized by relatively unregulated edge providers while their broadcast and cable competitors for those ads dollars remain regulated.

The buzz inside and outside D.C. last week over Zuckerberg’s appearance certainly made it seem like a flashpoint in the policy battle between ISPs and edge providers, though the focus was on Web users and their data.

Issue in the Spotlight

News networks blocked out coverage, on-air and online, for Zuckerberg’s testimony. The Open Markets Institute even launched a website to live-stream the hearings, and an #AskZuck digital ad campaign to get the online public to suggest questions that they wanted answered, with representatives of Free Press and the ACLU on hand to provide input as well.

“Facebook is a corporate monopoly whose business model is surveillance and user manipulation,” Open Markets Institute executive director Barry Lynn said. “It is a threat to our democracy.”

The group also launched a petition to express the sentiment that the edge not be let off the hook after the hearing lights were turned off “and Facebook’s lobbyists flood in.” The institute’s advisory board includes Tim Wu, who famously coined the term network neutrality.

That “don’t trust but verify” sentiment was echoed by several legislators during the Zuckerberg hearings as well, though Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) warned Congress did only two things well, nothing and overreacting, warning Zuckerberg to expect the latter.

Facebook supporters weren’t waiting until after the hearing to stick up for the social-media site. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation was trying to head off a stampede toward regulating the edge before Zuckerberg even took the stand. The group, whose board members include representatives of Apple, Twitter, Amazon and Google, said Congress should resist the urge to legislate “how tech companies design their services.”

Instead, it said, “Members of Congress and regulators should hold Facebook accountable for its public commitments and past promises, and ensure that the company [Facebook] continues its transformation into a more responsible corporate citizen.”

Congress has now made privacy an issue, and is unlikely to look away soon.

“Facebook failed us,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, said bluntly. That’s something Zuckerberg has all but acknowledged, chalking it up to a young, idealistic company whose growth and reach raced ahead of its ability to address data protection. But to Nelson that sounded more like nails on the chalkboard than chalk.

“Not only did they fail to safeguard the personal information of millions of users, they concealed it from us — and this is not the first time the company mishandled user information,” Nelson said. “Only now are they coming clean and informing those who have had their information compromised and telling us they are going to make things right.”

“The startling consumer abuses by Facebook and other tech giants necessitate swift legislative action rather than overdue apologies and hand-wringing,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said of the need for legislation to give users opt-in control.

Still, not everyone was on the “regulate the edge” bandwagon, particularly in the House, where several members in addition to Long warned of overreacting.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, who presided over one of the Zuckerberg hearings last week, told an audience at the NAB Show in Las Vegas earlier last week that the CEO was an incredible innovator. He said he was more in favor of cleaning out the regulatory underbrush so that all flowers could bloom in that landscape of permissionless innovation and light-touch regulation.

Hill Democrats, at least, have fought hard against that approach and refused to take ISPs at their pledges to protect internet privacy and openness, pledges that can be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. Many of them seemed similarly unwilling to take edge providers at their word, particularly given that litany of past transgressions and apologies.

Putting an extra urgency on U.S. policymakers to figure out how to treat online data collection and privacy is the European Union’s upcoming General Data Protection Regulation, which take effect in May.

“These will likely become the global standard unless the U.S. acts quickly,” Layton said.

Mark Zuckerberg continued to get a Hill hammering Wednesday (April 11) as the Facebook CEO continued to apologize for not sufficiently monitoring the social media site for bad actors and pledged to do better.

Apology was not accepted in most cases, and self-regulation appeared not to be the leading candidate for preventing future issues with protecting user data from abuse and letting them know what didn't qualify as abuse.

The hearing was still going on, but the battle lines were clear over issues including trust, potential bias, compliance with government consent decrees, and who owns online content. And while there was praise for Facebook as a vehicle for communications and social change and Zuckerberg as a great American success story, and employer of constituents, there were far more brickbats than bouquets.

Zuckerberg said it was not enough to give people a voice; the company needed to make sure those voices were used for good. He said it would take time to make the necessary steps to protect users information that Facebook has not been protecting sufficiently, and many months to investigate other apps.

Facebook will likely have to succeed in doing that to avoid new regs on edge providers, though he has also expressed a willingness to be regulated, so long as it is the "right kind" of regulation, signaling Wednesday he thought that was inevitable, which could explain why he was getting ahead of that by talking about how they should be regulated, not whether.

Following Zuckerberg's grilling Tuesday before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees, it was the House Energy & Commerce Committee's turn to train the spotlight on Facebook.

House E&C Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) has said he prefers deregulating ISPs to adding new regs to the edge, but has clearly not ruled that out, nor had many of the other members of the committee if Wednesday's hearing was any gauge.

"Facebook has grown," but it may not have matured," Walden told Zuckerberg. "It may have moved too fast and broken too many things," he added hearkening to Facebook's original slogan.

Walden said Facebooks breach of trust was troubling, and that breach "must have consequences." But he still entertained the possibility that the consequences could be the company cleaning up its own act.

Related: Senators Introduce Opt-In Edge Privacy Bill

Ranking member Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) hammered Facebook for vacuuming up data without protecting it. He cited Zuckerberg's answer to the Senators that he was not opposed to regulation. Pallone said there needed to be such comprehensive regulation. He said Facebook had allowed itself to be used as a tool to "hack our Democracy."

He said the company was either blind to the red flags or ignored them. Either way, he suggested, Congress needs act.

He also called for further hearings with other edge providers, ISPs, app developers and others Both Walden and Pallone pointed to the good that Facebook has done, jobs, including in Walden's district; helping motivate pro-social movements, and become integral in the daily lives of the nation.

Asked if Facebook was a media company, Zuckerberg said no, he thought of it as a tech company. He said Facebook has a responsibility over its content, which is what he thinks is at the heart of the question.

On the point of whether Facebook had matured, Zuckerberg said it had "grown and evolved" from the dorm-room startup.

While Facebook does not sell user data, it is probably its most valuable asset, so he asked why Facebook had not told folks just what it does with that data.

Zuckerberg said users have control and that is clear, but that it has not done a good job of explaining how advertising on the site works.

Related: Sen. Nelson Says Facebook Failed Us

Walden asked if Congress needs to intercede, but did not have time tpo get an answer.

Pallone said he does not have much faith in corporate America or their "GOP allies." He told the Facebook CEO that there needs to be legislation that provides more transparency, the lens through which he sees the issue.

Zuckerberg said Facebook limits the amount of data it collects and uses, that it is changing user privacy default settings so developers can't get as much access to data, but was not ready to commit changing those user default settings to limit as much as possible the collection of user data, saying it deserved more than the one-word answer Pallone was asking for.

Zuckerberg said people were free to port their data to other aps as part of the developer platform to allow people to share their information in different ways.

Pallone said people were not empowered enough to make those porting decisions in a "positive way."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) asked a question submitted to him on Facebook: Why is Facebook censoring Diamond and Silk and other conservative web sites. Zuckerberg said that had been an enforcement error made by his team that is being reserved. That appeared to be a new piece of news. He also said he wanted to give people the most free expression as possible.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) said the government had duped people in the 60's into sharing their personal information, and he was a victim of that. He said Facebook was doing something similar, the wholesale invasion and manipulation of their basic right to privacy, likening him to former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.

Zuckerberg said the difference is that people can choose not to have Facebook collect info. He said he knows of no surveillance effort that allows that.

Rush shot back that Facebook was no longer a dorm-room startup, and that it now had enormous social responsibility that Zuckerberg had failed to consider.

Zuckerberg said people are pro-actively choosing to use the service, which customer-facing controls over how that data is shared.

Rush brought up the report that Facebook had allowed real estate ads to exclude African Americans from target audiences.

Zuckerberg said that option for advertisers to remove ethnic groups had been removed.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) sounded a note of caution about regulation suggesting it could cement the position of a Facebook while hurting startups. Zuckerberg conceded that one of the things regulation can do is favor big companies, like his, while discouraging start-ups without big pockets.

Upton also raised the issue of a Facebook bias against conservative speakers, using the example of a Michigan state reps announcement of his platform for an upcoming political race, which included pro-life and opposition to "sanctuary cities." It was rejected by Facebook with the explanation that it did not accept shocking or disrespectful or violent speech. Upton read

the statement and pointed out he couldn't understand how it violated the policy. Zuckerberg said there could be a mistakethere, too.

He also told Senators Tuesday that he understood their concern about the left-leaning tendency of Silicon Valley, but that Facebook should not be vetting speech for political content.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) asked about Russian influence over elections and asked if Facebook had a way to inform the government if it discovered such activity.

Zuckerberg said Facebook was deploying new AI tools to ferret out fake accounts, but did not address whether there was also a process for informing the government of any activity it discovers. He called it an arms race and could not promise it could prevent all interference.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Zuckerberg who owned the "virtual you" online. He said everyone owns their own content and that protecting privacy is a foundational corporate value.

She said Facebook will have to provide opt-in choice to guarantee the right of privacy.

Related: Zuckerberg Says He Didn't Do Enough to Prevent Fake News

Blackburn asked whether Facebook adjusts its algorithms to censor speech. He said they didn't think of what they were doing as censoring speech.

The issue is not whether Facebook adjusts its algorithms, but whether the way it does that extends beyond terrorism and racism to a definition of hate speech that incorporates political views with which some at the company disagrees. That is Republican's key concern.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) cited reports that Facebook's algorithm for its news feed was biased against conservative voices and asked if that was a corporate directive. Zuckerberg said no. Scalise asked whether he was aware of that bias, but there was not enough time for and answer. Scalise asked for one in writing, and that Zuckerberg investigate whether anyone at thecompany built a bias into the algorithm.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said there needed to be robust penalties for violations of privacy, particularly Facebook violations of the FTC 2011 consent decree.

An obviously unhappy Rep. Michael Doyle (D-Pa.) pointed to the 20-year FTC consent decree and said that Zuckerberg appeared illing to "flout internal policies and government oversight when it suited him. He said the only way to close that trust gap is through legislation that will require giving a government agency rulemaking authority--something the FTC doesn't have--to oversee and protect user data.

Zuckerberg suggested that while Cambridge Analytica's access to user data was a breach of people's trust, it was not a violation of the consent decree.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) cited a long history of apologies from Facebook, which is why she said self-regulation just won't work. She cited Zuckerberg apologies from 2003, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2017, and 2018. On the subject of protections Zuckerberg said Facebook was supplying users at the point of decision, Schakwosky said: "Who is going to protect us from Facebook."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced an hours-long gantlet of frequently unhappy legislators Tuesday (April 10), in the first of two Hill hearings on privacy and access to Facebook users data.

Among the takeaways of that grilling was that he would support, at least in principle, requiring opt-in consent for any Web site sharing user info with third parties.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) pressed Zuckerberg on whether he would support legislation--he has just introduced such a bill--that would require obtaining that opt-in permission to share user's information with third parties. Zuckerberg answered "around" the question until ultimately saying he would support such legislation in principle and work with the senator.

The tenor of the hearing was tough, with legislators from both parties suggesting that Facebook was long on promises, but historically short on fixes. Sen John Kennedy (R-Ky.) perhaps summed it up best, and drew a few chuckles in the process. "Mr. Zuckerberg, I come in peace," he said, late in the proceedings. "I don't want to vote to have to regulate Facebook. But, by God, I will."

Looking somewhat out of place in dark suit and tie, the usually casually attired Zuckerberg had been anything but casual in his appearance or approach to the combined committees as he fielded often pointed and persistent questions.

While the legislators conceded his success was emblematic of the American dream, they feared it was also turning into a privacy nightmare.

Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook was too powerful. He didn't answer, though to another question he said he "certainly" didn’t think Facebook was a monopoly.

As he entered the hearing room Photographers massed around him as he sat alone--he was the single witness facing the senators---their cameras clicking and whirring like a swarm of locust.

He conceded during questioning that his company had responsibility over its content--rather than simply being a neutral platform--and that it would be doing more vetting of that content, including via artificial intelligence and doubling the number of people doing content review. He said the company had been founded as an idealistic and optimistic enterprise providing tools for good, but had ultimately not done enough to prevent harms to its users from those who misused those tools.

But he did not say he thought Facebook was a publisher or media company, but instead a tech company.

Related: Sen. Nelson: Facebook Failed Us

Zuckerberg apologized for what he conceded was a breach of users trust in the Cambridge Analytica data sharing incident, but would not concede that Facebook had violated a 2011 Federal Trade Commission consent decree on protection of users' privacy, something Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) presented what he said was evidence of. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) appeared unconvinced that Cambridge Analytica's data mining did not violate the plain language of the consent decree.

Blumenthal said he did not feel that Facebook's pledges of improved policies on privacy protection and identifying the advertisers in political and issue ads would cut it, and legislation would be required.

Zuckerberg at several points pointed out that Facebook does not sell any data to advertisers or developers, instead using its data to target ads, say, for skis to a user it knows likes to ski.

When it was his turn to ask questions, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), ranking member of the Commerce Committee, said, flatly, that if Facebook and others didn't get their acts in order, nobody would have privacy.

The Facebook CEO said he was not opposed to applying the "right" privacy legislation to the edge, and would work with Congress to come up with suggestions for such legislation. He said the question is not whether there should be regulation, but what the right regulations should be.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) warned that one problem with regulation is that powerful companies like Facebook could lobby themselves into regulation that cemented their positions

Zuckerberg agreed that cementing winners via regulation was a concern, but that that would not be his approach. And while he said he was not opposed to regulations, adding more rules could hurt smaller companies while his company could afford to comply.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) hammered Zuckerberg over allegations of anti-conservative bias. The CEO acknowledged that Silicon Valley's liberal leanings were an understandable cause for questioning, but that his goal was a platform for all forms of expression, with the exception of hate speech, nudity, and whatever else made the community feel "unsafe."

Asked if Facebook was responsible for its content--a key issue--Zuckerberg said yes, but there that was a larger conversation about that to be had, including how much policing of speech the country wanted social media to undertake.

Republicans Mike Lee (Utah) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) made the point that in order for Facebook to make money, it needs to monetize data, so that it does should not be a surprise to anyone. They said the issues were transparency and control. Users need to know what is being shared and how and have control over whether they want to do that or not.

Asked about preventing future election meddling via Facebook, Zuckerberg said that was a 2018 priority, but that it was an arms race with Russians bent on doing so.

The Facebook CEO was asked whether ISPs and the edge should be subject to the same privacy regs, as some ISPs have proposed.

He said he thought there was a distinction between the "pipes" (ISPs) and the applications that rode on top of that (the edge) that might require disparate treatment, though he suggested that could be more regs for ISPs in some cases, or for the edge in others.

Jonathan Spalter, president of USTelecom, which represents some of those ISPs, fired off a response before the hearing had even concluded.

“Broadband providers have 'leaned in' on providing strong consumer privacy protections for two decades," he said. "Congress should act now to eliminate consumer confusion and level the playing field. It’s time for the leadership of the so called 'platform companies' like Facebook to get on board because it’s in the best interest of American consumers and innovators.”

The hearing was a joint session of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees, which share jurisdiction over communications issues. The hearing room had to have an extra dais to accommodate the 44 senators in attendance.

Facebook is being scrutinized from left, right and center after revelations of Cambridge Analytica's access and monetization of data from as many as 87 million users without their knowledge, including building profiles and sharing them with the Trump campaign.

Zuckerberg said that the site had been built on a reactive model of dealing with problems. They would be flagged and addressed, but that now AI was giving it a better way to prevent problems before they occur and weed out content that should not be on the site.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to get advice from inside and outside the Beltway as he prepares to testify on Capitol Hill this week in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data sharing flap.

The News Media Alliance, which represents newspapers across the country, summed its message up in three words: "Support Real News, a message it is sending in an ad it has produced welcoming the Facebook founder to D.C.

"As a major source for news, Facebook has an obligation not only to be transparent about their data-sharing and usage practices [the subject of a pair of hearings at which Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify] "but they have a duty to ensure their users have access to high-quality, real news. Facebook benefits greatly from having this quality news content on their platforms, which they use to attract digital ad dollars. It is time they acknowledge this and respond by prioritizing quality news produced by real, professional journalists in their algorithms and in the News Feed."

Related: Powell Says Facebook Troubles Expose Myth of Openness

NMA launched a "Real News" campaign to try to get social media sites to prioritize curated journalism over the echo-chamber of 'fake news.'

"[W]e have argued that Facebook should give priority to news from trusted sources," NMA said back in January in response to this post from Zuckerberg. This would be positive for consumers, as well as help to address “fake news” issues.

As Congress prepares to grill Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg starting Tuesday (April 10), Charter CEO Tom Rutledge says it is time for uniform privacy protection legislation, including opt-in sharing of all information beyond use for its initial purpose. so long as it applies to the edge as well as ISPs.

That means and monetizing of third party use of all that online information.

In a blog post Monday, Rutledge urged Congress to pass strong standards that apply to everyone.

Zuckerberg is in the Hill hot seat over revelations that the information from millions of Facebook users--at least 50 million and perhaps more than 87 million--was shared with Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm that built profiles and sold them to political campaigns, including Donald Trump's.

"Tomorrow, Congress will begin important hearings to examine who is collecting what, how that data is shared and sold, and how best to protect and secure personal data when much of our lives are increasingly taking place online," he blogged.

Related: Facebook Boosts Political Ad Disclosures

"Internet users should have 'opt-in' protections, meaning all entities must receive opt-in consent to collect and share their data for purposes other than the actual service they engaged in. Additionally all online entities must be transparent about their information collection and sharing practices by providing concise, easy-to-find, understandable privacy notices to consumers. Again, these consumer protections only work if all members of the ecosystem – like social media apps, web browsers, broadband providers, online advertisers and data brokers – participate."

The FCC under chairman Tom Wheeler approved a privacy framework that included opt-in, but it did not apply to the edge. That was eventually nullified by Republicans in Congress.

In pushing back on an opt-in regime for ISPs alone, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association did point out the larger impact on the Web, arguing that data collection and sharing with third parties could threaten the ad-supported model that allows so much internet content to be free.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, wants some answers from Facebook about its alleged manipulation of trending stories to suppress conservative news, including what Facebook is doing to investigate the claims.

Facebook says the allegations, in a May 9 Gizmodo story, are false, but Thune followed up on the report with a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“Facebook must answer these serious allegations and hold those responsible to account if there has been political bias in the dissemination of trending news,” said Thune on sending the letter. “Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet," said Thune in a statement.

Thune wants the answers to the following by May 24.

1) "Please describe Facebook’s organizational structure for the Trending Topics feature, and the steps for determining included topics.  Who is ultimately responsible for approving its content?

2) "Have Facebook news curators in fact manipulated the content of the Trending Topics section, either by targeting news stories related to conservative views for exclusion or by injecting non-trending content?

3) "What steps is Facebook taking to investigate claims of politically motivated manipulation of news stories in the Trending Topics section?  If such claims are substantiated, what steps will Facebook take to hold the responsible individuals accountable?

4) "In a statement responding to the allegations, Facebook has claimed to have “rigorous guidelines in place for the review team” to prevent “the suppression of political perspectives” or the “prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another.”

a. "When did Facebook first introduce these guidelines?

b. "Please provide a copy of these guidelines, as well as any changes or amendments since January 2014.

c. 'Does Facebook provide training for its employees related to these guidelines?  If so, describe what the training consists of, as well as its frequency.

d.  "How does Facebook determine compliance with these guidelines?  Does it conduct audits?  If so, how often?  What steps are taken when a violation occurs?

5) "Does Facebook maintain a record of curators’ decisions to inject a story into the Trending Topics section or target a story for removal?  If such a record is not maintained, can such decisions be reconstructed or determined based on an analysis of the Trending Topics product?

a. "If so, how many stories have curators excluded that represented conservative viewpoints or topics of interest to conservatives? How many stories did curators inject that were not, in fact, trending?

b. Please provide a list of all news stories removed from or injected into the Trending Topics section since January 2014."

WASHINGTON -- Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler has "connected" with Facebook chairman, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg about the issue of social media and violence, according to an agency source speaking on background.

The source did not characterize the conversation, but said the bottom line for the chairman remains that the FCC does not regulate "edge providers" such as Facebook, the popular social-networking platform.

A group of legislators sent a letter to Wheeler last week seeking more information following his testimony at a House oversight hearing. At that hearing, several legislators wondered, in the wake of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, if the FCC could do something to shut down web sites that endorsed violence.

Wheeler said at the time that the government might be able to get at the issue via its definition of a "lawful intercept," but that was something Congress would have to define and update. Wheeler pointed to reports the Paris attackers were using PlayStation 4 to communicate. He also said network security was an issue. Wheeler promised to work with the committee if it needed to update its laws.

Among those concerned about the issue of violence and social media at the hearing was Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), whose question about what the FCC could do to combat the use of social media to incite or endorse violence by gangs drew the Wheeler pledge to contact Zuckerberg that day (Nov. 18). Rush asked in his follow-up question about the status of the Zuckerberg conversation.

Wheeler had told Rush he would be happy to use the FCC's bully pulpit and "talk to Mark Zuckerberg and others" to raise the issue. "I will call Mark Zuckerberg this afternoon and I am sure he is concerned about it as well and will have some thoughts," he said.

Wheeler and Zuckerberg did not connect at that time (on Nov. 18), an FCC spokesperson confirmed to Multichannel News at the time, though members of their staffs did talk.

WASHINGTON — Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler said he does not think his agency has the authority to start shutting down websites used to promote terrorist attacks like those in Paris, but said there might be some things the FCC could or should do when social media is used to promote violence.

He even pledged to use his bully pulpit to call Facebook chairman, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to talk about the issue.

During a House Communications Subcommittee FCC oversight hearing, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who has issues with how the agency is treating low-power TV stations in the broadcast incentive auction, decided to seek written responses and instead use his time to talk about the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attacks.

Barton said he was going off-script. He said that terrorist groups such as Islamic State, which took credit for the Paris attacks, can't beat the U.S. militarily, but are trying to use the Internet and social media "to beat us psychologically."

Given that, he said, "Isn't there something we can do under existing law to shut those Internet sites down?" He said that even in an open society, when there was a clear threat, "we could do something about the Internet and social-media side of the equation."

Wheeler said he was "not sure our authority extends to picking and choosing among websites." But he did say there were specific things the government could do.

Barton asked whether Congress should give the FCC authority to shut down the sites. Wheeler said one issue was the question of what is considered a "lawful intercept" — something he said Congress can define, essentially updating the definition in the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) wiretap law, which was passed in 1994.

"You read in the press that they were using PlayStation 4 games to communicate, which is outside the scope of anything ever considered in CALEA," Wheeler said. He said updating the lawful intercept concept might be one avenue worth pursuing.

But network security is also an issue, Wheeler said, citing 17 "mysterious" cuts of fiber links in the San Francisco Bay Area in the last few months.

"We need to have some kind of a 'big data' capability of determining what's happening to our network out there," he said. That’s because network sabotage is as likely as people sending incendiary messages, he said.  

He said the FCC has the only network-outage reporting system in the US., and it is "barely holding together with bailing wire and glue" because it uses "ancient" technology. He said has been asking for appropriations for updates.

"We have the ability inside our systems to use big data to connect the dots, "but we don’t have the capacity to do it," Wheeler said.

The chairman said he would work with the committee to update the laws.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said that the FBI was dealing with the House Select Committee on Intelligence relative to the Bay Area cuts.

Barton and Eshoo agreed that the network threats were a clear and present danger, and Eshoo said she did not think the cuts of the fiber were a coincidence. Barton said terrorists were using the Internet in an "offensive, inappropriate — Eshoo added "effective" — way and, at minimum, the government should make it more difficult, and perhaps "absolutely shut it down."

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) talked about violence in Chicago and said it was well known that gang leaders are using social media to advance their violent agendas and conflicts.

He said he understood the FCC had limited jurisdiction over Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but asked if there was anything the FCC could do in the interests of public safety to curtail the violence. He asked if the FCC would add its voice and stature to the discussion.

Wheeler said the issue was similar to terrorist using social media. "We do not have jurisdiction over Facebook and other edge providers, and we do not intend to assert jurisdiction over them, and I don't believe, as legitimate as your concern is, I don't believe we have the jurisdiction to do the kind of thing that you suggest."

Wheeler said he was happy to use his "bully pulpit" to talk to Zuckerberg and others to make the point that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed, but the FCC does not have regulatory authority over social media.

Rush said he was not asking for regulation. "I will call Mark Zuckerberg this afternoon to raise the issues you've raised and the issue that Mr. Barton has raised and I'm sure he [Zuckerberg] is concerned about this as well and has some thoughts," Wheeler said.