Zuckerberg’s Congress meeting showed lawmakers know nothing about Facebook

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg ("The Zuck" to some) sat in front of Congress on a leather booster seat, in an attempt to downplay the fact that his service for rating hot girls in college has gotten...a little out of hand. He had been called to face 44 US senators in his first-ever public appearance at a congressional hearing, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed that over 50 million users had had their data used for political gain in the US election and European Union referendum (aka, Facebook has been selling our data to anyone with cash). The dialogue between Facebook’s CEO and the members of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees got quite weird at times.

For example, Senator Dick Durbin asked if Zuckerberg would be comfortable sharing the name of the hotel he stayed in last night, to which he replied: “No. I would probably not choose to do that publicly, here”. The famously guarded billionaire also wouldn’t share the names of people he has been messaging of late – illustrating how closely he protects his privacy, while disregarding everyone else's. As a seemingly endless ream of camera shutters focussed in on the Facebook CEO, it was clear that he’s quickly running out of places to hide.

Amid the intense grilling, Twitter users had a lot to say about this long-awaited spectacle. Lawmakers clearly want to introduce regulation, but many joked that it was obvious that they didn’t know anything about technology. Especially given the fact that at one point, Zuckerberg had to literally explain that Facebook runs ads instead of making users pay. Social media users could only laugh at the whole spectacle.