our services to choose to share photos or send messages, and every single time they choose to share something, they have a control right there about who they want but that level of control is extremely important. >> they certainly know within the facebook pages who their friends are. but they may not know, and you conceded this point, in the past, that sometimes that information is going way beyond their friends, and sometimes people have made money off of sharing that information, correct? >> senator, you are referring to our developer platform, and it may be useful for me to give background on how we set up that, if that's useful. >> i have three minutes left. so maybe can you do that for the record, because i have a couple other questions that i'd like to ask. you have recently announced something that is called messenger kids, facebook created an app allowing kids between the ages of 6 and 12 to

send video and text messages through facebook as an extension of their parent's account. you have cartoon-like stickers and other designs to appeal to little kids. first-graders, kindergartners. organizations warned facebook, they pointed to a wealth of research excessive use of digital devices and social media is harmful to kids and argued that young children are simply not ready to handle social media accounts at age 6. there are concerns about data that's being gathered about these kids. now there are certain limits in the law, we know. children's online privacy protection act. what guarantees can you give us that no data from messenger kids is or will be collected or shared with those that might violate that law? >> all right. >> senator, so a number of things are important here. the background on messenger

kids is we heard feedback from thousands of parents that they want to be able to stay in touch with their kids and call them, use apps like facetime when working late or not around and want to communicate with kids but want to have complete control over that. we can all agree, when your kid is 6 or 7, even if they have access to a phone, you want to control everyone they can contact. there wasn't an app that did that. we built this service to do that. the app collects a minimum amount of information, that is necessary to operate the service. so for example the messages that people send is something that we collect in order to operate the service, but in general, that data is not going to be shared with third parties. it is not connected to the broader facebook user. >> as a lawyer, i picked up on that phrase in general. in general, it seems that circumstances it will be shared with third parties. >> no, it will not. >> all right. would you be open to the idea

that someone having reached an old age having grown up with messenger kids should be allowed to delete the dat that you've collected? >> senator, yes. as a matter of fact, when you become 13, which is our legal limit or limit -- we don't allow people under the age of 13 to use facebook. you don't automatically go from having a messenger kids account to a facebook account, you have to start over and get a facebook account. so i think it's a good idea to consider making sure that all that information is deleted and in general people are starting over when they get their facebook or other accounts. >> i'll close because i have a few seconds. illinois has a biometric privacy act, our state does, to regulate the commercial use of facial, voice, finger and iris scans and the like, we're in a fulsome debate on that and facebook is trying to carve out exceptions to that. i hope you fill me in with how that is consistent to

protecting privacy. thank you. >> mr. cornyn. >> thank you, mr. zuckerberg for being here. i note up until 2014, the mantra or motto of facebook was move fast and break things, is that correct? >> i don't know when we changed it, but the mantra is currently move fast with stable infrastructure, which is a much less sexy mantra. >> much more boring. my question is: during the time it was facebook's mantra or motto to move fast and break things, do you think some of the misjudgments perhaps mistakes you've admitted to here were as a result of that culture or that attitude, particularly as regards to personal privacy of information of your subscribers? >> senator, do i think that we made mistakes because of that, but the broadest mistakes that we made here are not taking a

broad enough view of our responsibility. the move fast cultural value is more tactical around whether engineers can ship things and different ways that we operate, but i think the big mistake that we've made looking back on this is viewing our responsibility as just building tools rather than viewing our whole responsibility as making sure that the tools are used for good. >> and i appreciate that, because previously or early -- in the past, we've been told that platforms like facebook, twitter, instagram, the like are neutral platforms and the people who own and run those for profit, and i'm not criticizing, doing something for profit in this country, but they bore no responsibility for the content. you agree, now, that facebook and other social media platforms are not neutral

platforms but bear some responsibility for the content? >> i agree that we're responsible for the content. and i think that there's -- one of the big societal questions that i think we're going to need to answer is the current framework that we have is based on this reactive model that assumes that there weren't a.i. tools that could proactively tell whether something was terrorist content or bad, so it naturally relied on requiring people to flag for a company and the company needed to take reasonable action. in the future, we're going to have tools that are going to be able to identify more types of bad content, and i think that there were moral and legal obligation questions that i think we'll have to wrestle with as a society about when we want to require companies to take action proactively on certain of those things and when that gets in the way of -- >> i appreciate, that i have two minutes left to ask you questions. >> all right. >> so you, interestingly, the

terms of the -- what do you call it? the terms of service is a legal document which discloses to subscribers how information is going to be used, how facebook is going to operate, but you concede that, you doubt everybody reads or understands that legalese. those terms of service. so is that to suggest that the consent that people give subject to that terms of service is not informed consent? in other words, they may not read it and if they read it, they may not understand it? >> i just think we have a broader responsibility that are what the law requires. >> i'm talking about -- i appreciate that. what i'm asking about in terms of what your subscribers understand in terms of how their data is going to be used, but let me go to the terms of service under curve app number

two, you own all of the content and information you post on facebook. that's what you've told us here today a number of times, so if i choose to terminate my facebook account, can i bar facebook or any third parties from using the data that i had previously supplied for any purpose whatsoever? >> yes, senator, if you delete your account, we should get rid of all of your information. >> you should or do you? >> we do. >> how about third parties you have contracted with to use some of that underlying information, perhaps to target advertising for themselves. you can't -- do you claw back that information as well or does that remain in their custody? >> senator, this is a very important question, i'm glad you brought this up, there is a very common misperception about facebook that we sell data to advertisers, we do not sell data to advertisers.

>> you clearly rent it. >> what we allow is for advertisers to tell us who they want to reach and we do the placement. so if an advertiser comes to us and says all right, i'm a ski shop and want to sell skis to women, then we might have some sense because people shared skiing-related content or said they were interested in that. they shared whether they're a woman and we can show the ads to the right people without that data changing hands and going to the advertiser. that's a fundamental part of how our model works and often how it is misunderstood. i appreciate you brought that up. >> thank you, senator cornyn. we indicated we would take a couple of breaks, give our witness an opportunity. and i think we've been going just under two hours. >> we can do a few more. >> are you -- you want to keep going? >> maybe 15 minutes, would that work? >> we'll keep going. senator blumenthal is up next,

and we will commence. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here today, mr. zuckerberg. you have told us today and you've told the world that facebook was deceived by alexander kogan when he sold user information to cambridge analytica, correct? >> yes. >> i want to show you the terms of service that alexander kogan provided to facebook, and note for you, that, in fact, facebook was on notice that he could sell that user information. vur seen these terms of service before? >> i have not. >> who in facebook was responsible for seeing those terms of service that put you on notice that that information

could be sold? >> senator, our app review team would be responsible for that. >> has anyone been fired on that app review team? >> senator, not because of this. >> doesn't that term of service conflict with the ftc order that facebook was under at that very time, that this term of service was, in fact provided to facebook, and you'll note that the ftc order specifically requires facebook to protect privacy. isn't there a conflict there? >> senator, it certainly appears that we should have been aware that this app developer submitted a term that was in conflict with the rules of the platform. >> well, what happened here was, in effect, willful

blindness. it was heedless and reckless which, in fact, amounted to a violation of the ftc consent decree, would you agree? >> no, senator. my understanding is that it is not that this was a violation of the consent decree. as i've said a number of times today, i think we need to take a broader view of our responsibility around privacy than just what is mandated in the current law. >> well, here is my reservation mr. zuckerberg, and i apologize to you but my time is limited. we've seen the apology tours before. have you refused to acknowledge even an ethical obligation to have reported this violation of the ftc consent decree, and we have letters, we've had contacts with facebook employees, and i'm going to submit a letter for the record from sandy parikilis with your

permission that indicates not only a lack of resources but lack of attention to privacy, and so my reservation about your testimony today is that i don't see how you can change your business model unless there are specific rules of the road. your business model is to monetize user information, to maximize profit over privacy, and unless there are specific rules and requirements enforced by an outside agency, i have no assurance that these kinds of vague commitments are going to produce action. so i want to ask you a couple of very specific questions and they are based on legislation that i've offered, the my data app. legislation that senator markey

is introducing today, the consent act which i'm joining. don't you agree that companies ought to be required to provide users with clear, plain information about how their data will be used and specific ability to consent to the use of that information? >> senator, i do generally agree with what you're saying, and i laid that out earlier when i talked about what -- >> would you agree to an opt-in as opposed to an opt-out? >> senator, i think that certainly makes sense to discuss and the details around this matter a lot. >> would you agree that users should be able to access all of their information? >> senator, yes, of course. >> all of the information that you collect as a result of purchases from data brokers as well as tracking them?

>> senator, we have already a download your information tool that allows people to see and to take out all of the information that facebook, that they've put into facebook or facebook knows about them. yes, i agree, we already have that. >> i have a number of other specific requests that you agree to support as part of legislation, i think legislation is necessary, the rules of the road have to be the result of congressional action. we have -- facebook has participated recently in the fight against the scourges of text trafficking and the bill we passed that will be signed into law. the stop exploiting sex trafficking act was the result of our cooperation. i hope we can cooperate on this kind of measure as well. >> senator, i look forward to having my teamwork with you on this. >> thank you, senator

blumenthal. senator cruz. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. zuckerberg, thank you for being here. mr. zuckerberg, does facebook consider itself a neutral public forum? . >> we consider ourselves a platform for all ideas. >> let me ask the question again: does facebook consider itself a neutral public forum. representatives of your company are giving conflicting views. this neutral public forum allowing everyone to speak? >> senator, here's how we think about this. i don't believe that -- there are certain content that clearly we do not allow. hate speech, terrorist content, nudity, anything that makes people feel unsafe in the community. from that perspective, that's why we generally try to refer to what we do as a platform -- >> let me try because the time is constrained. just a simple question. the predicate for section 230 under the cda is that you're a neutral public forum.

do you consider yourself a neutral public forum or engaged in political speech which is your right under the first amendment? >> well, senator, our goal is certainly not to engage in political speech. i'm not that familiar with the specific legal language of the law that you speak to, so i would need to follow up with you on that. i'm just trying to lay out how broadly i think about this. >> mr. zuckerberg, there are a great many americans who i think are deeply concerned that facebook and other tech companies, are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship. numerous instances with facebook in may of 2016, gizmodo reported that facebook purposely and routinely suppressed conservative stories from trending news. including stories about cpac, including stories about mitt romney, the stories about the lois lerner scandal, and glen

beck. facebook has shut down the chick-fil-a appreciation day page, has blocked a post of fox news reporter, has blocked over two dozen catholic pages, and most recently blocked trump supporters diamond and silks page with 1.2 million facebook followers after determining content and brand were, quote, unsafe to the community. to a great many americans that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias. do you agree with that assessment? >> senator, let me say a few things about this. first, i understand where that concern is coming from because facebook and the tech industry are located in silicon valley which is an extremely left-leaning place. and this is actually a concern that i have and i try to root out in the company is making sure that we don't have any bias in the work that we do, and i think it is a fair concern that people would -- >> let me ask this --

>> now -- >> are you aware of any ad or page taken down from planned parenthood? >> senator, i'm not, but let me just -- >> how about moveon.org? >> sorry? >> moveon.org? >> i'm not specifically aware. >> any democratic candidate for office? >> i'm not specifically aware, i'm not sure. >> in your testimony, you say that you have 15 to 20,000 people working on security and content review. do you know the political orientation of those 15,000 to 20,000 people engaged in content review? >> no, senator, we do not generally ask people about political orientation when joining the sdmuchl as ceo have you made hiring or firing decisions based on what candidate they supported? >> no. >> why was lucky palmer fired? >> that is a personnel decision that is not appropriate here.

i can commit it was not because of a political view. >> do you know of those 15,000 to 20,000 people engaged in content review, how many, if any, have ever supported financially a republican candidate for office? >> senator, i do not know that. >> your testimony says it is not enough that we just connect people, we have to make sure the connections are positive. it says we have to make sure people aren't using their voice to hurt people or spread misinformation. we have a responsibility not just to build tools, to make sure those tools are used for good. mr. zuckerberg, do you feel it is your responsibility to assess users whether good or positive connections or ones the 15,000 or 20,000 people deem unacceptable or deplorable? >> are you asking me personally? >> facebook? >> i think that there are a number of things we would all agree are clearly backed. foreign interference in our elections, terrorism,

self-harm. >> what about censorship? >> well, i think that you would probably agree that we should remove terrorist propaganda from the service. so that, i agree, is clearly bad activity that we want to get down and we're generally proud of how well we do with that. what i can say and i want to get this in before the end here is that i am very committed to making sure that sfook a platform for all ideas. that is a very important founding principle of what we do, we're proud of the discourse and the different ideas that people can share on the service, and that is something that as long as i'm running the company, i'm going to be committed to making sure is the case. >> thank you. >> thank you, senator cruz. you want to break now? [laughter] >> you want to keep going? >> sure, that was pretty good. so all right. >> all right, we have senator white house is up next. if you want to take a five-minute break. we have been going a good two hours. >> thank you. >> we'll recess for five

minutes and reconvene. >> he had a chance, he was offered an opportunity, zuckerberg by senator thune to take a break, but he said no let's go ahead with it and got real hard ball questions from senator blumenthal and senator cruz that went to the heart of a lot of the fiercest criticism of what it is that facebook is doing. i'm david asman by the way. >> hello. i'm cheryl casone. we're going to take you back live when all of this resumes, but we want to point out right now this big market rally today. >> including facebook, by the way. >> facebook just like it closed up 4.5%. best performance for the stock in two years. >> the dow up 429 points, all began with talk this morning from the chinese leader suggesting that, in fact, he's trying uncle, he's softening his stance on trade. that sent the markets up right

at the get-go. up in early activity and stayed there all through the day. all three of the major indices up more than a full percentage higher. >> welcome to "after the bell." we've got a truncated show, they're taking a break right now. we are going to have more on the rally in just a few moments but want to go back to capitol hill. we have deirdre bolton standing by. deirdre, what are your takeaways so far from the hearing? >> well, i think by what i heard so far, mark zuckerberg does seem to be standing up pretty well to the questions. but i want to play one of the more fiery exchanges and that is between mark zuckerberg and senator lindsey graham, where the senator, senator graham, asks mark zuckerberg if he has a monopoly or not. >> what do we tell our constituents, given what's happened here? >> my position is not that there should be no regulation. i think the internet -- >> do you embrace regulation?

>> i think the real question as the internet becomes more important in people's lives is what is the right regulation, not whether there should be. >> but you as a company welcome regulation? >> if it's the right regulation, yes. >> you think the europeans have it right? >> i think they get things right. >> so would you work with us in terms of what regulations you think are necessary in your industry? >> absolutely. >> that was senator graham's second question or follow-up question to mark zuckerberg. but he started out really strong saying who are your competitors? and mark zuckerberg demurred and senator graham didn't let him go, he kept pressuring and saying do you consider yourself a monopoly. you had zuckerberg laughing nervously, not here today, but the other two exchanges that stuck out in my mind, senator thune asked him why should we trust you? why should we believe you now after 14 years of different forms of apologies, albeit much smaller than what we're seeing

todays, and the other exchange that stands out clearly in my mind for being one of the more heated ones aside from what we saw from senator cruz was senator dick durbin who point-blank said do you feel comfortable, mark zuckerberg, telling us which hotel you're staying at this week? that got an anxious laugh from mark zuckerberg and the crowd as well. do you feel comfortable telling us who you've been messaging all day and week? do you want to show us that log. finally mark zuckerberg said no. he has taken at different times a little bit more heated exchange, tougher questioning. i think some of the other questions have been more policy directed, more suggestive, if you were to agree to regulation, what is the most helpful form, unhelpful form? obviously the three i highlighted are keeping the momentum going. >> he's been very clear and on the defensive saying over and over, we don't want content with terrorism, self-harm and

hasn't been able to defend himself there is no competition and facebook is too big. great analysis, appreciate it. >> michael nunes and gary kaltbaum. heather and david kennedy, secretary of trusted ceo. heather, to you first, i thought the exchange between senator blumenthal and zuckerberg was really the one that got to the core of what it was that they did that shouldn't be done again and whether it's possible for facebook to correct this? right after zuckerberg said we don't sell data. he said you, the user, control the information and data you put on facebook. we saw the terms of service between cambridge analytica and facebook, senator blumenthal had an assistant show it, showing clearly that, in fact, that's exactly what they were doing with the data. now zuckerberg didn't see that.

i'm sure he doesn't see every contract that's signed between facebook and the people they deal with but showed they have sold or rented data to an outsider and, of course, they lost control of what that outside der with that data. that seemed to hurt zuckerberg's case? >> that's exactly why he's there today. 87 million users' data was misused or sold to cambridge analytica through a third-party app. that was given permission. we don't know if cambridge analytica had permission from the other side. i definitely don't remember giving them permission to use my data, but perhaps it was buried somewhere in one of the many privacy agreements on one of the different agreements, opt-in or opt-out. that is why he's in the situation right now. they violated our trust, and that's not right. >> michael, when i heard zuri zuckerberg say you control the

information you use on facebook, i found that to be a hard sell. you know the inside how the social network sites work. is that a tough sell? is it true what he said? >> i think he's right that users opt-in into the service. they decide what they put on the platform, and by uploading those things they opt into facebook's terms of agreement. i think what most of the public is lost on is what happens to the information once they submit it and the hotel that you're staying in or whether you prefer a certain type of food or a certain baseball team or very innocuous details about your life can be used to trianglate ideologies that you might prescribe to or political leanings. >> senator cruz, forgive me, senator cruz focused on. that clearly there are cases that some stuff reviews the liberal bias on the part of a lot of people that work for facebook affected, what goes on

and what gets taken off of facebook. >> exactly right. senator cruz referenced a story i had written in 2016, what he got to the bottom of is facebook is much larger than someone like mark zuckerberg can even keep up with. so some of the cancellations, part of the reporting that i've done is facebook is moving fast. >> we don't have much time, i'm wondering how all of this will affect facebook's value. that is, we've seen the hit in the stock over the past couple of weeks, although it was up 4.5% today, that doesn't make up for what it's lost. what will advertisers begin to pull out as a result of this. it will affect the bottom line of the company? >> i think the playing field does change, but i'm not sure by much. they've already said it really hasn't impacted how many people may or may not be leaving.

as long as advertisers think they can make money because of it, and a ton of businesses that use facebook. i think they'll be fine, but leave no doubt, if they don't change, somebody is going to change for them and they have definitively abused the relationship between user and the company and we're finding it out in spades that the point in time. >> david, sorry to do this. 30 seconds. will facebook's value diminish as a result of what we're seeing today? >> i don't think so. i don't think there's a big surprise that facebook uses this information. sheer volume of the concern how they're going about doing it. can you lock down the privacy settings but at the same time they do need to be more cautious. what of the concerns are on the call logs and harvesting from text messages and messaging are alarming. i don't think the questions are answered very well. >> terrific stuff, guys. appreciate it. cheryl? >> of course, we are waiting for the continued grilling of

facebook ceo mark zuckerberg to continue. when it does, we're going to take you back to capitol hill. you're watching "after the bell."

. >> we want to take you back live to capitol hill. mark zuckerberg, the ceo of facebook back with testimony and question-and-answer session continues. let's listen. >> they will be put in from the aclu, the electronic privacy information center, the association for computing machinery public policy council and public knowledge. senator whitehouse. >> thank you, chairman. >> thank you. mr. chairman, i want to correct one thing i said earlier in response to a question from

senator leahy. he had asked if why we didn't ban cambridge analytica at the time when we learned about them in 2015? and i answered that what my understanding was was they are not on the platform, we're not an app developer or advertiser. when i went back and met with my team afterwards, they let me know that cambridge analytica did actually start as an advertiser later in 2015, so we could have in theory banned them then, we made a mistake not doing so. i wanted to be sure i updated that, i misspoke or got that wrong earlier. >> senator whitehouse. >> thank you, chairman. welcome back mr. zuckerberg. on the subject of bans, i wanted to explore a little bit what these bans mean. obviously, facebook has been done considerable reputational damage by association with alexander kogan and with

cambridge analytica, which is one of the reasons you're having this enjoyable afternoon with us. your testimony says that alexander kogan's app has been banned. has he also been banned? >> yes, my understanding is he has. >> so if he were to open up another account under a name, and you were able to find it out, that would be closed down? >> senator, i believe we are preventing him from building any more apps. >> does he have a facebook account still? >> senator, i believe the answer to that is no, but i can follow up with you afterwards. >> okay. and with respect to cambridge analytica, your testimony is that first you required them to formally certify they deleted all improperly acquired data. where did that formal certification take place? that sounds kind of like a quasi official thing to

formally certify. what did that entail? >> senator, first they sent us an e-mail notice from their chief data officer, telling us they didn't have any of the data anymore, they deleted it and weren't using it, and later followed up with i believe a full legal contract where, they certified that they had deleted the data. >> in the legal contract? >> yes, i believe so. >> okay, and then you ultimately said that you have banned cambridge analytica. who exactly is banned? what if they opened up cranston, rhode island, analytica, different corporate forum, same enterprise. would that enterprise also be banned? >> senator, that is certainly the intent. cambridge analytica actually has a parent company, and we banned the parent company and recently we also banned a firm called aiq which i think is

also associated with them, and if we find other firms associated with them, we will block them from the platform as well. >> are individual principals, p-a-l-s, principals of the firm, also banned? . >> senator, my understanding is we're blocking them from doing business on the platform, but i do not believe we're blocking people's personal accounts. >> okay. can any customer amend your terms of service, or is the terms of service a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for the average customer? >> senator, i think the terms of service are when they are, but the service is defined by people because you get to choose what information you share, and the whole service is about which friends you connect to. >> my question would relate to senator graham held up that big

fat document, it's easy to put a lot of things buried in a document, then later turn out to be of consequence, and all i want to establish with you is that document that senator graham held up, that is not a negotiable thing with individual customers. that is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for customers to sign up to or not use the service? >> senator, that's right on the terms of service, although we offer a lot of controls, so people can configure the experience how they want. >> so last question on a different subject having to do with the authorization process that you are undertaking for entities that are putting up political content or so-called issue ad content. you've said that they all have to go through an authorization process before they do it. you said here we'll be verifying the identity. how do you look behind a shell

corporation and find who's behind it through your authorization process? we'll step back. do you need to look behind shell corporations in order to find out who is really behind the content that's being posted, and if you may need to look behind a shell corporation, how will you go about doing that? how will you get back to the true, what lawyers call, beneficial owner of the site that is putting out the political material? >> senator, are you referring to the verification of political and issue ads? >> yes, and before that political ads, yes. >> yes, so what we're going to do is require a valid government identity and we're going to verify the location. so we're going to do that so some way someone sitting in russia, for example, couldn't say they're in america, and therefore able to run election ad. >> if they were running through a corporation domiciled in delaware, you wouldn't know they are actually a russian

owner. >> senator, that's correct. >> okay, thank you, my time is expired and appreciate the courtesy of the chair for the extra seconds, thank you, mr. zuckerberg. >> senator lee? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want the follow-up on a statement you made shortly before the break a few minutes ago. you said that there are some categories of speech, some types of content that facebook would never want to have part of and takes active steps to avoid disseminating, including hate speech, nudity, racist speech, i assume you also meant terrorist acts, threats of physical violence. things like that. beyond that, would you agree that facebook ought not be putting thumb on the scale with regard to the content of speech? assuming it fits out of the one of the categories that is prohibited? >> senator, yes, there are generally two categories of content we're very worried about. one are things that could cause

real world harm. terrorism certainly fits into that. self-harm fits into that. i would consider election interference to fit into that. and those are the types of things that we -- i don't really consider there to be much discussion whether those are good or bad topics. >> sure, and i'm not disputing that. what i'm asking is once you get beyond the categories of things that are prohibited and should be, is it facebook's position that it should not be putting thumb on the scale, should not be favoring or disfavoring speech based on content, based on the viewpoint of that speech? >> senator, in general, that's our position. what one of the things that is really important, though, is in order to create a service where everyone has a voice, we need to make sure people aren't bullied or basically intimidated or the environment feels unsafe for them. >> okay, when you say in general, that's the exception that you are referring to, the exception being that if someone

feels bullied, even if it's not a terrorist act, nudity, terrorism, racism, beyond that, would you step in and put your thumb on the scale as far as the viewpoint of the content being posted? >> senator, no. in general, our goal is to let people have as much expression as possible. >> okay, so subject to the objects we discussed. let me ask you this, isn't there a significant free market incentive that a social media company, including yours, has, in order to safeguard the data of your users? don't you have free market incentives? >> yes. >> don't your interests align with those of us here who want to see data safeguarded? >> absolutely. >> do you have the technological means available at your disposal to make sure that that doesn't happen, and

to protect say an app developer, from transferring facebook data to a third party? >> senator, a lot of that we do, and some of that happens outside of our systems and require new measures. >> for example, what we saw here was people chose to share information with an app developer. that worked according to how the system was designed. that information was then transferred out of our system to servers that this developer alexander kogan had, and then that person chose to then go sell the data to cambridge analytica that is going to require much more active intervention and auditing going forward because once it is out of our system, it is a lot harder to have a full understanding of what's happening. >> from what you've said today and previous statements made by you and other officials at your company, data is at the center of your business model.

it's how you make money. your ability to run your business effectively given that you don't charge your users is based on monetizing data. and so the real issue it seems to me, really comes down to what you tell the public, what you tell users of facebook about what you're going to do with the data, about how you're going to use it. can you give me a couple of examples, maybe two examples, of ways in which data is collected by facebook, in a way that people are not aware of? two examples of types of data that facebook collects that might be surprising to facebook users. >> well, senator, i would hope that what we do with data is not surprising to people. >> and has it been at times? >> well, senator, i think in this case, people certainly didn't expect this developer to sell the data to cambridge

analytica. in general, there are two types of data that facebook has. the vast majority and the first category is conent that people chose to share on the service themselves. so that's all the photos that you share, the posts that you make. what you think of as the facebook service. everyone has control every single time that they share that, they can delete that data any time they want. full control, the majority of the data. the second category is around specific data that we collect in order to make the advertising experiences better and more relevant and work for businesses, and those often revolve around measuring, okay, if we showed you an ad and you click through and go somewhere else, that would show you the ad worked. that helps make the experience more relevant and better for people getting more relevant ads and better for the businesses because they perform better. have you control of the second type of data. you can turn off the ability

for facebook to collect. that ads will get worse so people don't want to do that, but have you complete control over what you do as well. >> senator schotts. >> i want to follow up on terms of service, 3200 words with 30 links. one of the links is to data policy, 2700 words with 22 links and i think the point has been well made that people have no earthly idea what they're signing up for and i understand that at the present time that's legally binding but wonder if you can explain to the billions of users in plain language what are they signing up for? >> senator, that's a good and important question here. in general, you know, you sign up for the facebook, you get the ability to share the information that you want with people. that's what the service is, right? you can connect with the people that you want and can you share whatever content matters to

you, whether that's photos or links or posts, you can control who you share it with, take it down and you don't have to put it up in the first place if you want. >> what about the part that people are worried about not the fun part? >> well, what's that? >> the part that people are worried about is the data is improperly used, so people are trying to figure out are your dm's informing the ads, are browsing habits being collected? everybody understands that when you click "like" on something or you like a certain movie or have a particular movie proclivity, that is fair game, everybody understands that. what we don't understand exactly because both as a matter of practice and as a matter of not being able to decipher those terms of service and the privacy policy is what exactly are you doing with the data and do you draw a

distinction between data collected in the process of utilizing the platform and that which we clearly volunteer to the public to present ourselves to other facebook users? >> senator, i'm not sure i fully understand this. in general, people come to facebook to share content with other people. we use that in order to also inform how we rank services like news feed and ads to provide more relevant experiences. >> let me try a couple specific examples. if i'm e-mails within whatsapp does, that ever inform your advertisers? >> no. we don't see any of the content in whatsapp. it's fully encrypted. >> is there some algorithm that spits out information to the ad platform, and let's say i'm e-mails about "black panther" within whatsapp, do i get a "black panther" banner ad? >> senator, we don't -- facebook systems do not see the

content of messages being transferred over whatsapp. >> that's not what i'm asking. i'm asking whether the systems talk to each other without a human being touching it. >> senator, i think the answer to your specific question is if you message someone about "black panther" in whatsapp, it would not inform any ads. >> okay, want to follow up on senator nelson's original question, the quest ownership of the data. i understand as a matter of principle you want our customers to have more rather than less control over the data. i can't imagine it's true over a legal matter they own my facebook data. you're the one monetizing it. you want to modify that as a statement of principle, a sort of aspirational goal, but it doesn't seem to me that we own our own data, otherwise we'd be getting a cut. >> well, senator, you own it in the sense that you choose to put it there, you could take it down any time and you completely control the terms

under which it's used. when you put it on facebook, you are granting the license to show it to other people, that's necessary in order for the service to offer it. >> right, so your definition of ownership is i sign up, i voluntarily, and i may delete my account if i wish, but that's basically it. >> well, senator, i think that the control is much more granular than that. you can choose each photo that you want to put up or each message, and you can delete those, and you don't need to delete your whole account. you have total control. >> if the time i have left, i want to propose something for and you take it for the record. i read an interesting article by professor jack balkan at yale, people think of fiduciaryies as responsible in the economic sense but this is really about a trust relationship like doctors and lawyers, tech companies should hold and trust our personal

data. are you open to the idea of information fiduciaries enshrined in statute. >> it is an interesting idea and jack is very thoughtful in the space, do i think it deserves consideration. >> thank you. >> senator fascia? >> thank you, mr. chairman, thank you mr. zuckerberg for being here today. appreciate your testimony. full scope of facebook users' activity can print very personal picture i think, and additionally you have those two billion users that are out there every month, and so we all know that's larger than the population of most countries. so how many data categories do you store does, facebook store on the categories that you collect? >> senator, you can clarify what you mean by categories. >> there are past reports that

indicate that facebook collects about 96 data categories for those two billion active users? that's 192 billion data points that are being generated, i think, at any time, from consumers globally. so how many does facebook store out of that? do you store any? >> senator, i'm not actually sure what that is referring to. >> on the points that you collect information, if we call those categories, how many do you store of information that you are collecting? >> senator, the way i think about this is there are two broad categories. this probably doesn't line up with whatever the specific report that you are seeing, is i can make sure we follow up with you afterwards to get you the information you need on

that. the two broad categories that i think about are content that a person has chosen to share, and that they have complete control over, they get to control when they put it into the service, when they take it down, who sees it, and the other category are data that are connected to making the ads relevant. have you complete control over both, you can turn off the data related to ads, you can choose not to share content or control who sees it or take down the content in the former category. >> does facebook store any of that? >> yes. >> how much do you store of that? all of it? everything we click on? is that in storage somewhere? >> senator, we store data about what people share on the service and information that's required to do ranking better, to show you what you care about in news feed. >> do you store text history, user content, activity, device

location. >> senator, some of that content with people's permission, we do store. >> do you disclose any of that? >> yes. senator, in order for people to share that information with facebook, i believe that almost everything that you just said would be opt-in. >> and the privacy settings, it's my understanding they limit the sharing of that data with other facebook users, is that correct? >> senator, yes. every person gets to control who gets to see their content. >> and does that also limb the ability for facebook to collect and use it? >> senator, yes, there are other -- there are controls that determine what facebook can do as well. so for example, people have a control about face recognition. if people don't want us to be

able to help identify when they're in photos that their friends upload, they can turn that off and we won't store that kind of template for them. >> and there was some action taken by the ftc in 2011, and you wrote in a facebook post at the time on, a public page on the internet that it used to seem scary to people, but as long as they could make their page private, they felt safe sharing with their friends online, control was key. and you just mentioned control. senator hatch asked you a question and you responded there about complete control. so you and your company have used that term repeatedly, and i believe you use it to reassure users, that you have control and complete control over this information? >> well, senator, this is how

the service works. the core thing that facebook is and all of our services, whatsapp, instagram, messenger. >> so is this, then, a question of facebook is about feeling safe, or are users actually safe? is facebook being safe? >> senator, i think facebook is safe. i use it, and my family use it, and all the people i love and care about use it all the time. these controls are not just to make people feel safe, it's actually what people want in the product. the reality is that -- just think about how you use this yourself, you don't want to -- if you take a photo, you're not always going to send that to the same people. sometimes text it to one person, sometimes a group, that you have a page, you probably want to put stuff out there publicly to communicate with constituents. all the different groups of people that someone might want to connect with and very

important in practice for the operation of the service, not just to build trust, providing people with control also does that, but actually in order to make it so people can fulfill goals of the service. >> senator cooms. >> thank you for joining us today. i think the reason we're having this hearing is attention between two basic principles you laid out. first you said about the data that users post on facebook, you control and own the data that you put on facebook. you said positive, optimistic things about privacy and data ownership, but it's also the reality that facebook is a for-profit entity that generated $4 billion in revenue by targeting ads. facebook claims that advertising makes it easy to find the right people, capture their attention and get result us and recognize that an ad supported service is as you said earlier today, best aligned with your mission and values. but the reality is there's a lot of examples where ad targeting has led to results

they think we would all disagree with or dislike or concern us. you already admitted that facebook's own ad tools allowed russians to target users, voters, based on racist or anti-muslim or anti-immigrant views and may have played a significant role in an election year in the united states. "time" magazine posted a story saying wildlife traffickers are continuing to use facebook tools to advertise animal parts and left to question whether ad-targeting tools would allow other concerning practices like diet pill manufacturers targeting teenagers struggling with weight or allowing liquor distributor to target alcoholics or gambling i'll give it one concrete example i'm sure you're familiar with pro publicc back in 2016 facebook lets advertisers exclude by race in real estate advertising. there's a way you could say this

particular ad i only want to be seen by white folks not by people of color and that clearly violates fair housing laws and you have promptly announced that was a bad idea, you'll change the tools and build a new system to spot and reject ads that violate our commitment to fair housing and yet a year later a follow-up story by pro publica said those changes hadn't been fully made and it was still possible to target housing advertisement in a way that's racially discriminatory and in a way about making bold and promising exchanges of practices in the way and reality of how facebook operated in the real world are in tension. several different senators have asked earlier about the 2,011 ft c consent decree that required facebook to better protect user 's privacy and there are a whole series of examples where there have been things brought to your attention, where facebook has apologized and said

we'll change our practices and policies and yet there doesn't seem to have been as much follow-up as would be called for at the end of the day policies aren't worth the paper they're written on if facebook doesn't enforce them and i'll close with a question that's really rooted in an experience i had today as an avid facebook user. i woke up this morning and was notified by a whole group of friends across the country, asking if i had a new family or if there was a fake facebook post of chris coons. i went to the one they suggested that had a different mid all initial than mine and there is my picture with senator dan sullivan's family. same schools i went to but a whole lot of russian friends. dan sullivan has a very attractive family by the way. >> [laughter] >> keep that for the record mr. chairman. the friends who brought this to my attention included people who i went to law school in hawaii and our own attorney general, and fortunately i've got great peop t