
Senate Embarrasses Themselves in Facebook Hearing - 0xFFC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-A84_Y4D50
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mtgx
I agree with Cenk. There were actually quite few "bad" questions, even those
that for some have "obvious" answers.

The bigger issue is that in some cases the questions were a bit too general,
which allowed Zuckerberg to respond to them while actually dodging giving the
right answer.

Like for instance, the senator Ana thinks embarrassed himself the most, was
trying to figure out just how much Facebook allows users to delete the data
the company has _collected on them_ or data the users have given to third-
party developers. But Zuckerberg is pretending to be dumb and not fully
understand the question and says "but Senator, we already allow you to delete
the data!"

But we know Zuckerberg is being misleading there. Facebook doesn't allow you
to delete all the data _they_ have on you. They allow you delete the data
you've posted online yourself at most (and maybe some other interactions on
the platform, but it definitely doesn't include data gotten from cookie
tracking and whatnot).

The Senate questions were actually pretty good. It's the House questions that
I found much more boring/uninteresting and repetitive. I think the biggest
mistake the House members made and also a bit the senators was to confuse
advertisers with third-party developers.

So they kept asking questions about Facebook "giving/selling data to
advertisers" when Facebook is mostly doing that with third-party developers,
and they are the ones actually _getting_ your data. Also, Facebook has been
sharing _your_ data with data brokers, but almost nobody asked the right
questions about that.

And when someone did, Zuckerberg again dodged easily saying "we've ended those
partnerships" but there was no follow-up asking what happened to all the data
they've given them for years, which was very disappointing to see.

