After long weeks of running from his many detractors, following revelations that the personal data of some 87 million Facebook account holders was used by Cambridge Analytica and others to probably manipulate political campaigns, Mark Zuckerberg finally was forced to answer questions on the scandal when he was hauled before members of the United States Senate on Tuesday.
The Facebook CEO faced hours of grilling. Though, in truth, because of the very scale and nature of his company, its dominance in the marketplace and the many issues raised by the platform’s acquiescence and abuse of personal data through third-party algorithmic hucksters and social media snake oil salesmen, far longer time was actually needed to get anywhere close to the bottom of this very modern-day scandal.
For his part, Zuckerberg remained calm and largely unflappable. Indeed, while he was sweating under the lights and questions on Capitol Hill, his company’s stock price was enjoying its best day in the marketplace since the scandal broke — and the $74 billion (Dh272 billion) in his personal bank accounts certainly provided a salve for any awkward moments that came his way during the Senate session. As it was, each of the senators was limited to just five minutes of questions with no provision or time for follow-up queries.
Yes, Zuckerberg’s appearance made for riveting television, but if you didn’t get to watch it on a big screen, you could always follow Facebook live-streaming provided by two of the senators. That itself speaks about the very issue we are confronted with — Zuckerberg’s creation is now a global behemoth, one that we simply can’t escape. We are now all truly components of its algorithmic calculation.
