In 2018 Zuckerberg faced a senate hearing following the 2016 election.
Is Facebook a tech company or a publisher? Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) asked Zuckerberg whether he considered his company to be a tech giant or a publisher, noting that the answer to this question would frame the sort of regulation to which Facebook would be subjected.
“I view us as a tech company because we build technology and product,” Zuckerberg said. And while Facebook does publish content, as Sullivan noted, the platform does not, itself, produce the content. “When people ask us if we’re a media company or a publisher, my understanding is — what the heart of what they’re really getting at is — do we feel responsibility for the content on our platform?” he added. “The answer to that, I think, is clearly yes, but I don’t think that’s incompatible with fundamentally, at our core, being a technology company where the main thing we do is have engineers and build products.”
Zuckerberg tossed out a few broad suggestions for government oversight of Facebook and other social media that have historically dodged federal regulation. He suggested “a simple and practical set of ways that you explain what you are doing with data” — in other words, requirements to simplify the lengthy privacy agreement documents that users typically agree to without reading.
The 33-year-old tech titan faced an onslaught of 44 senators eager to maximize their allotted five minutes for grilling the witness.
www.politico.eu