Mark Zuckerberg is in the hot seat this week, and it’s not behind a screen.

The Facebook chief executive plays one of the leading roles in what has been defined as “political theatre” by some, while others enjoy unfiltered access to “a man who is typically wrapped in cotton wool by his PR team and deputies”.

BBC reports:

Mr Zuckerberg will inevitably be grilled on data privacy – with particular focus on the Cambridge Analytica scandal – and why it took a newspaper to discover the breach of its systems. And he’ll be expecting some hard questions on election interference as well as his own and Facebook’s future.

Eina.

Other than caviar and Moët, here’s seven things you can expect to roll off Zuckerberg’s tongue this week:

1. The good, the good, and the good.

Mark will surely be focusing on the sense of community that Facebook has brought to the world:

[H]e’s right. Organising our real world lives, whether a birthday party or protest march, has become much easier thanks to Facebook. As has sharing pictures and video with families and friends.

He’ll also touch on how the platform helps small businesses to get up and running at seriously low costs.

2. “I’m a human!”

Most of us think of the Zuck as some sort of robot genius, which is true. He can code as well as any of his engineers and changed the world with a simple idea, but:

[H]is challenge will be to appear human and to come across as genuinely remorseful – even if deep down he still believes, as the company said originally, that users willingly gave up their data.

Speak about your kids, bro.

3. “It was Kogan.”

Although Facebook took accountability for mistakes around data policy, it maintains that Aleksandr Kogan, University of Cambridge researcher, is the one at fault:

It was Mr Kogan who created the personality app that hoovered up data then allegedly used by Cambridge Analytica. And it was CA that said it had deleted the data when it apparently hadn’t.

4. YouTube and Twitter

Yup, he won’t leave the other giants out of this – and for good reason:

There was plenty of Russian propaganda on Twitter, for example, and YouTube’s woes are very well documented.

They won’t be there, but it won’t stop Mark from connecting events to other technology companies that hold the same power.

5. “Umm.”

“It’s a simple yes or no question,” said every politician ever at these types of hearings. The camera-keen (aren’t they all?) representatives will try baffle Zuckerberg from the get-go, asking things that simply cannot be answered with one word.

6. The Honest Ads Act

This is a proposed law that would increase transparency around political advertising on the net and is a biggie:

[G]ives Mr Zuckerberg the chance to say he is open to government regulation, while also avoiding any major impact on the way Facebook is run.

7. The consent degree signed in 2011

What the hell is that?

It’s a document that details an agreement to look after data in certain ways, and was drawn up after the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] gave Facebook a telling off content that people thought and assumed was just being shared among friends was made public.

What this means is that Facebook agreed not to “misrepresent in any manner, expressly or by implication”, the way that collected data will be used.

Funny thing is, the hearing will be widely accessible via the platform that’s in question. Damn, this guy is a genius.

[source:bbc]