If we learnt one thing from yesterday’s Senate hearing with Mark Zuckerberg, it’s that a bunch of old fuddy-duddy American politicians don’t really understand technology.
The Zuck faced questions from 44 senators at a joint hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committees, ostensibly to answer for Facebook’s habit of handing over its users’ data and profiting from turning a blind eye to Russian propaganda efforts.
Facebook’s founder played things down the line, but perhaps most interesting (and easy to mock) were the questions that came his way.
Via Vox, here are a few that really stood out:
“How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) asked Zuckerberg early on in the hearing.
Ummm – Mark, you got this one:
Sen. Hatch: “If [a version of Facebook will always be free], how do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”
Mark Zuckerberg: “Senator, we run ads.” https://t.co/CbFO899XlU pic.twitter.com/bGKWks7zIk— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 10, 2018
It’s not rocket science, Senator. Welcome to the internet.
My personal favourite came from Sen. Brian Schatz, who definitely isn’t a tech geek:
[He] repeatedly asked Zuckerberg whether Facebook could see emails he sends on WhatsApp, which Facebook owns. You don’t send emails via WhatsApp, and WhatsApp is encrypted, meaning it can’t be accessed by outside parties.
Brian definitely gets that ‘blue tick but no reply’ on WhatsApp.
The average age of those 44 senators was 62, by the way, so just imagine your parents trying to catch out a tech icon.
Then there were those who shared some rather strange stories with Zuck. I suppose people are prone to sharing every mundane detail of their lives on social media, so why not cut out the middle man and tell the founder to his face?
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) [great name – that’s him below] revealed he was the first lawmaker who had his “Facebook address” printed on his business cards from the Senate print shop and that his son is a fan of Instagram. He went on to ask Zuckerberg whether Facebook collects user data through “cross-device tracking”; the executive said he would get back to him on that.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) revealed that after “communicating with my friends on Facebook and [indicating] that I love a certain kind of chocolate,” he “all of a sudden” started receiving ads for chocolate. “What if I don’t want to receive those commercial advertisements?” He went on to press Zuckerberg about Facebook’s advertising practices and how it helps advertisers target users.
If you’re not getting hit up with choccie ads on Facebook, are you even living?
On a more serious note, if you want to see how Facebook defines you to advertisers then check this out.
As with any major story, the jokes and memes are never far behind. TIME have collected some of the finest efforts:
Remember that time you tried to explain how the Wi-Fi works to your old man?
Imagine that, but with the whole world watching and waiting to pounce.
