Ooh, things are not looking great for Mark Zuckerberg right now.

First it got weird for him when he testified in front of a technologically-challenged American Congress last month, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Now the Facebook CEO has gone and made European lawmakers lekker cross.

Here’s the scoop, according to a CNN report: Zuckerberg was questioned on Tuesday by political leaders and lawmakers at the European Parliament in Brussels for about 80 minutes.

Lawmakers were given three minutes each to ask their questions one after another – ranging from fake news and extremist content to accusing the guy of censorship and claiming Facebook is a monopoly. Zuckerberg was allotted time at the end to answer each of them.

I suppose that this format is kinda to blame here, since Zuckerberg’s replies were not impressive.

More like absolutely frustrating.

Here’s a video on how it went:

Not good, bro.

The Guardian puts it best:

The rambling format saw the leaders of pan-European political groupings take it in turns to pose dozens of separate questions on wildly different topics, some of which were incisive and some of which involved oblique references to the literature of Goethe.

After an hour, with only a few minutes of the hearing scheduled to remain, Zuckerberg was finally asked if he would like to respond to all the questions in one go. Understandably, he gave a speech containing broad answers and promised that his team would be in touch after the event with more precise responses.

The oblique Goethe-referencing lawmakers were not standing for this:

They used the last few minutes of the meeting to complain and accused him of giving general answers.

“I asked you six yes and no questions,” Philippe Lamberts, a Green party politician, said. “I got not a single answer.”

Uh, well, maybe if the guy had more time, perhaps? Too much to ask for?

Per CNN:

However, the parliamentarians pushed back at Zuckerberg for not agreeing to attend a full committee meeting, similar to the one he attended in the US Senate.

“You asked for this format for a reason,” Lamberts told Zuckerberg.

Oh. Never mind.

Anyway, Zuckerberg wants to make it clear that he’s very, very sorry about how Facebook has been used:

[Zuckerberg] insisted that, while his social network was an overall force for good, mistakes had been made. “Whether it’s fake news, foreign interference in elections or developers misusing people’s information, we didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibilities. That was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”

However, he suggested these problems could be fixed through new technology [including artificial technology] and an investment in extra staff.

He still largely dodged questions about Facebook’s data collection practices, though, including the data it gathers from non-users.

Jirre, Zuckerberg, man.

It’s expected that there will be “more back and forth between the EU and Facebook over the coming weeks”, since the Facebook CEO failed to make substantial pledges to change the way his platform operates.

For now, Zuckerberg lives to fight another day.

[sources:cnn&guardian]