Zuckerberg hearing: Facebook founder attacked by US politicians for site's 'bias' and failure to protect users - as it happened
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Your support makes all the difference.After navigating nearly five hours of questions from 44 US senators on Tuesday about the abuse of citizen's data, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has done it all again on Wednesday.
Once again, he was attacked on a range of fronts: as well as the company's failure to protect its users data, politicians questioned the site's perceived bias against conservative voices, and its use for selling illegal materials like drugs.
The billionaire Facebook boss will testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, which was seeking answers following revelations that Cambridge Analytica harvested personal information from 87 million Facebook profiles for the purpose of voter profiling.
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Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he was one of the 87 million people whose data was compromised by Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook is in the process of sending all 2.2 billion users an update informing them of whether they were caught up in the scandal.
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There is now going to be a five minute break in the proceedings.
Looking through some of the comments on our Facebook page during the break, it's fair to say that Mark Zuckerberg is a divisive figure.
Glenn Tucker says: "A lot of people here hating on Mark Zuckerberg even after the man built the social media platform that you are using to troll the man."
Jamil Ahmed says: "Is it me or does Mark look like he has transitioned from wood to flesh? Pinocchio finally got his wish but it's not a happy ending."
Congresswoman Kathy Castor compares Facebook to following people around the neighborhood.
"You watch where we go," she says.
We're back onto the subject of ads, specifically targeted ads. Congressman Brett Guthrie asks what more regulation around gathering people's personal data would do to the internet. Mr Zuckerberg responds: "It would make the ads less relevant."
After more than seven hours of questioning across two days, the subject of the psychological mood study finally comes up.
Congressman Pete Olson asks whether it was a good idea. Mr Zuckerberg says Facebook had "a responsibility" to understand users' moods.
Mr Zuckerberg explains to Congressman Jerry McErney that a person's browsing history is not included in the data dump.
Although this is a US hearing of a US company boss, Facebook likes to think of itself as a global company. With 2.2 billion users worldwide, this is a fair claim, but it makes having a standards policy that works in every country it operates very tricky.
Read more on this complex issue here:
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