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Comment by tareqak | Hacker News Reader

Congressman Costello from Pennsylvania asked if AI will be used to recognize the faces of "non-FB users".

Combined with the shadow profiles question by Congressman Lujan from New Mexico, some of these questions are getting closer to what people need to know and understand. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of questioning seems like blind man's bluff / Marco Polo [0].

It'd be nice if Congress can be asked to host a debate between subject matter experts in the privacy domain (who are knowledgeable and can effectively communicate this knowledge and their concerns to lay people) and tech company C-level executives like Zuckerburg.

2:50 PM EDT: Congressman Duncan from North Carolina is going to give Zuckerburg a small copy of the US Constitution.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_man%27s_buff

2:59 PM EDT - Edited to add "to lay people".

3:02 PM EDT - Added "Marco Polo". Thanks to caabalis for the reminder.

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> 2:50 PM EDT: Congressman Duncan from North Carolina is going to give Zuckerburg a small copy of the US Constitution.

Showboating... Not to defend Facebook and I admittedly have not watched any testimony or questioning, but I'm sure these politicians made no mention of FOSTA, SOPA, the PATRIOT Act, net neutrality, NSA domestic surveillance... Zuckerberg could have turned this all around on them.

there's more than a handful of things that actually did happen that Zuckerberg could have "turned around" on them. And he didn't. Don't you wonder why?

No, he is clearly in damage control mode, trying desperately to keep his monopoly without any major concessions.

Will be interesting to see how that works out for him, probably fairly well I would guess.

Really? By my read Congress is begging him to do their jobs for them, asking the fox to design the henhouse.

Indeed, They want, Facebook to "fix itself" to some meaningful degree. Except Facebook has little desire for actual change, so like I said, I imagine very little in practice will change, just a lot more "yay we <3 privacy" spam from their PR department.

He knows regulation is inevitable and upsetting politicians would put him in a worse lobbying position. I still wish he would have turned it around on them.

> Don't you wonder why?

No, his job at the hearing is to present an image of a corporate leader detached from the political fray, and specifically not to provide any fuel to any possible partisan political fire, which cannot possibly help him at this point.

Or Equifax.

FB is a giant company that has produced billions of dollars in value.. to complete the cliche, it was literally started in a college dorm room. Congress and the Senate want to look good, but they don't want to hurt the company. (Quite the opposite, the company's story is the stuff of American legends and there isn't a single elected rep or senator that wouldn't ask FB to consider their state if there was some sort of FB "HQ2" project.) More to the point, they have no idea how to "fix" the situation. Facebook does what it does and users freely give them tons and tons of valuable information. Equifax and company do what they do and it's all behind the scenes, it's not even possible to opt out and it would be devastating to your credit if you could. Facebook helped some electioneers target ads better and maybe moved the needle in an election, that shit has been happening since there have been elections. Equifax and company have cost countless people billions or even trillions of dollars in extra payments because their proprietary credit algorithm says they're a higher risk and we have no idea if it's a valid algorithm or not, but banks trust it.

Speaking of moving to their state:

There was actually a Congressman (Mr. Cramer, North Dakota) who mentioned Silicon Valley bias, and thought that the moderators themselves were there too. He asked Zuckerburg to consider opening a Facebook location in middle America (name dropping a city or two in his own state of North Dakota). Zuckerburg clarified that the moderators were located around the world. [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/h3vkyVC7Qj8?t=14044

you can opt out to a degree. you can freeze your credit making most queries impossible. i’ve paid deposits for utilities and cell service rather than unfreeze my credit.

the opt out aspect isn’t perfect of course since id thieves can still steal the data, but with frozen credit at least it’s harder for them to use for critical purposes.

Showboating is part of how politics works in a democracy but it can still produce real results.

A few did mention net neutrality and sex trafficking, but it was mostly (if not completely) patting themselves on the back for their part in stop government overreach for the former, and protecting the vulnerable / punishing bad actors in the latter. I'm just adding this to fill you in.

The part that I found odd in terms of topics were the questions about:

(1) apparent bias against conservatives from some Facebook-employed moderators because of incorrect or delayed actions taken.

(2) the idea that Obama campaign "did the same thing".

(3) Facebook allowing ads from allegedly illegal pharmacies in the wake of the opioid crisis.

I'd actually go as far as to say that around 20% of the questions that the Senate and the House asked were unrelated to the events surrounding Facebook and their relationship with Cambridge Analytica.

He'll never do it, because if he makes their lives difficult, they'll Standard Oil his ass posthaste.

> It'd be nice if Congress can be asked to host a debate between subject matter experts in the privacy domain (who are knowledgeable and can effectively communicate this knowledge and their concerns) and tech company C-level executives like Zuckerburg.

That'd be amazing. Effectively champion warfare[1] but for civil liberties.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_warfare

> It'd be nice if Congress can be asked to host a debate between subject matter experts in the privacy domain (who are knowledgeable and can effectively communicate this knowledge and their concerns to lay people) and tech company C-level executives like Zuckerburg.

I'd love to see him try to field some questions from the EFF or ACLU.

> It'd be nice if Congress can be asked to host a debate between subject matter experts in the privacy domain (who are knowledgeable and can effectively communicate this knowledge and their concerns to lay people) and tech company C-level executives like Zuckerburg.

Funny, I suggested the same thing on IRC, My suggestion was that they should have had the EFF write the questions ;).

That would be pay per view.

I'm very glad to have read that wikipedia page, and feel smarter. But I think you'd have reached a broader audience and not required a link if you had just called it Marco Polo.

Oh yeah. I forgot that that was the same thing. Thanks! I'll add it.

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