US lawmakers have their first chance to “talk” to Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The meeting with Congress is set for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow (Tuesday and Wednesday), and the elected representatives of the American people will have the opportunity to rate Facebook.
But because politicians are not always so well informed about how data collection works through social networks, the editors of Bloomberg View and Bloomberg Gadfly have compiled a list of questions that members of Congress could ask Mark Zuckerberg to get serious answers to the serious issues at stake.

38 Questions for Mark Zuckerberg

Data and privacy

Stephen L. Carter: Facebook collects a lot of information from its users. Would you say that this data belongs to Facebook or to the user from whom it is collected?
Shira Ovide: Do you think that average Facebook users, including your parents, understand that Facebook collects information from websites and apps that have nothing to do with Facebook, including all the websites with “Like” buttons? Do you agree to limit data collection only to activities within Facebook and other digital services owned by Facebook?
Joe Nocera: Do you have any objections to asking your members’ permission to share their data? If so, why?
Michael R. Strain: Many people worry that Facebook is so dominant that it is too difficult for other companies to compete. One solution to this might be to redistribute ownership of Facebook users’ social graphs. Do you think that user ownership of the social graph is a good idea? If not, why not?
[su_note note_color=”#efefef” text_color=”#000000″]S.S.: The term social graph refers to the diagram that the social network has created for each of us. Imagine each diagram as a tree, containing every piece of information that has been collected (relationships, relatives, pages, interests, preferences, purchases, friends, socio-economic status and many other interests).[/su_note]
Scott Duke Kominers: Will Facebook contact every person whose data was used inappropriately to explain what information was collected, how it was shared and how it was used? Will Facebook take steps to compensate these people?
Alex Webb: Apple uses a process it calls “differential privacy” to keep the data it collects from its users anonymous. What is stopping Facebook from doing the same?
Barry Ritholtz: How much would Facebook charge its users for a monthly subscription with zero off-platform tracking, no ads, and periodic permanent deletion of all internal Facebook data?
Alex Webb: What will Facebook do to reduce its reliance on user data as a source of revenue?

Russian interference

Shira Ovide: Do you regret saying right after the US presidential election that it was “a really crazy idea” that information from Facebook could have influenced the presidential election?
Cathy O'Neil: What are you going to do about Russia?

• Have you investigated whether Russian ads influenced voter turnout in 2016? If not, why not?
• Did you collect the appropriate data to do so?
• Are you collecting the appropriate data now?
• Are you conducting randomized experiments so that you can conduct such tests in future election cycles?

Eli Lake: Could you review Russia's overall online advertising campaign?

Impact on society

Leonid Bershidsky: Which do you think is the biggest breach of trust:

• Allowing developers to have people's data without their consent?
• Spreading “news” that you know is fake?
• Accepting ads that you know are malicious? or
• that you don't allow advertisers to control how their ads are displayed?

Please sort the order.
Conor Sen: Facebook’s user experience, with posts driven by algorithms that aim to maximize engagement, is highly successful, perhaps too successful. The question that SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff posed is a good one: Is the social harm of Facebook addiction so damaging that it should be regulated like cigarettes?
Ramesh Ponnuru: A long time ago, people read the news in print or watched a channel. They could choose which stories they read and they could know who was telling them. With your company, more and more people are learning about the world from machines using processes that almost none of them understand. Can you describe the process by which some stories are published first and others are not? Can you describe it without using the word “algorithm”? What do you think people should know about that process?
Matthew Winkler: According to a recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), fake news travels faster than true stories. How can Facebook prevent this travel?
Conor Sen: Why have news publications and political advertising on Facebook received a regulatory exemption while traditional media outlets did not?
Virginia Postrel: What control does Facebook exercise over the ads it accepts? What reasonable standards of accountability could it apply to advertising?
Eli Lake: In recent years, a growing number of activists have complained that their pages on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms are not being displayed. This banning practice is opaque. Could you tell us whether Facebook has a banning practice and, if so, how you determine which pages should be displayed?

Culture on Facebook

Stephen L. Carter: Does Facebook care about the political or ideological views of its employees when hiring and promoting them?
Shira Ovide: Throughout Facebook’s 14-year history, there have been repeated controversies over the company’s data collection policies or privacy violations. First, does Facebook believe it has complied with the FTC settlement? And second, do the repeated, persistent user privacy controversies throughout Facebook’s history indicate that something is wrong at the company?
Alex Webb: When was the last time an employee suggested that one of your (referring to Mark Zuckerberg as CEO) suggestions was a bad idea?
Shira Ovide: In 2016, one of your senior executives, Andrew Bosworth, released a deliberately provocative internal memo that outlined drawbacks to your effort to connect the world.
“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated by our tools,” the memo said. This suggests something contrary to what you’ve said in interviews over the past year, that Facebook can actually predict potential risks. Why hasn’t it done so?
Adam Minter: In July 2009, the Chinese government blocked Facebook from operating in China. The exact reason remains unclear, but it fits into an overall pattern. The Chinese government doesn’t want a social media platform – foreign or domestic – to operate in China unless it complies with local law. It’s no secret that you want to see Facebook in China (Mark Zuckerberg’s wife is Chinese). Could you tell the committee whether you’re willing to agree to China’s demands?

Finally, a general tip for legislators

Jonathan Bernstein: This kind of hearing and its celebrity is not about politics. That's not a bad thing. So you can ask Mark Zuckerberg the most impressive question. The goal is to create publicity.
[su_note note_color=”#efefef” text_color=”#000000″]Faceblock: abstain from Facebook, WhatsApp & Instagram for 24 hours[/su_note]

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