Once Again: Senator Hatch Asked Zuckerberg a RHETORICAL Question About Ads.
Another day, another journalist who didn't want to admit fault in being very slow to cover Zuckerberg with skepticism, blames congress for asking stupid questions of the Facebook CEO in April 2018. In fact those very April 2018 congressional hearings shifted the public's view of Facebook just enough that journalists could finally cover the social media giant with sufficient skepticism without being mocked as Luddites by the public or other media members.
Exactly which journalist committed this sin today is less important. What is important is that an institution in an age of eroding institutional trust, actually performed. Performed better than it usually does, and accomplished a shift in public perception of a growing problem in a way no other entity hitherto had been able to do.
Institutions matter.
The most common example journalists or members of the public cite as proof of the false notion that congress was "unprepared" when they questioned Zuckerberg in 2018 is Senator Orin Hatch's rhetorical question about ads.
For the record, it is clear Senator Hatch knows the internet economy is largely mostly driven by ads. He was performing a public service by asking this rhetorical question. Below is a transcript of Senator Hatch's five-minute conversation with Zuckerberg on April 10, 2018 (taken from c-span video of the Zuckerberg hearings, beginning roughly at the 53 minute mark):
Senator Fischer asked Zuckerberg more specific questions about just how many data points Facebook stores on each Facebook user, is it really 96 data points per user as one little-seen journalistic report had published? Facebook, until then, had not divulged that answer to the public because the question had not been asked in a forum where there was pressure to answer, such as a forum where many users were watching.
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Exactly which journalist committed this sin today is less important. What is important is that an institution in an age of eroding institutional trust, actually performed. Performed better than it usually does, and accomplished a shift in public perception of a growing problem in a way no other entity hitherto had been able to do.
Institutions matter.
The most common example journalists or members of the public cite as proof of the false notion that congress was "unprepared" when they questioned Zuckerberg in 2018 is Senator Orin Hatch's rhetorical question about ads.
For the record, it is clear Senator Hatch knows the internet economy is largely mostly driven by ads. He was performing a public service by asking this rhetorical question. Below is a transcript of Senator Hatch's five-minute conversation with Zuckerberg on April 10, 2018 (taken from c-span video of the Zuckerberg hearings, beginning roughly at the 53 minute mark):
HATCH: Well this is the most intense public scrutiny that I've seen for a tech-related hearing since the Microsoft hearing that I chaired back in the late 1990s.Finally Zuckerberg gets to speak. He may have been falling asleep, distracted by Hatch's age, typical of the tech industry's disgusting ageism that allowed them to operate without public scrutiny until then. Here is how Zuckerberg responded, and Hatch continued:
The recent stories about Cambridge Analytica and data mining on social media have raised serious concerns about consumer privacy. And naturally I know you understand that.
At the same time, these stories touch on the very foundation of the internet economy and the way the websites that drive our internet economy make money. Some of them profess themselves shocked, shocked! that companies like Facebook and Google share user data with advertisers. Did any of these individuals ever stop to ask themselves why Facebook and Google don't charge for access? Nothing in life is free!
Everything involves tradeoffs. If you want something without having to pay money for it, you're going to have to pay for it in some other way, it seems to me. And that's what we're seeing here. And these great websites that don't charge for access, they extract value in some other way. And there's nothing wrong with that as long as they're up front about what they're doing.
To my mind, the issue here is transparency. It's consumer choice. Do users understand what they're agreeing to when they access a website or agree to Terms Of Service? Are websites up front about how they extract value from users, or do they hide the ball? Do consumers have the information they need to make an informed choice regarding whether or not to visit a particular website?
To my mind these are the questions that we should ask or be focusing on.
Now Mr. Zuckerberg, I remember well your first visit to Capital Hill back in 2010. You spoke to the Republican hi-tech task force which I chair. You said back then that Facebook would always be free. Is that still your objective?
ZUCKERBERG: Senator, yes. There will always be a version of Facebook that is free. It is our mission to try to help connect everyone around the world ........As is clear from the transcript, Hatch, one of the first senators and members of congress to question Zuckerberg, opened with a rhetorical question. This opener allowed other senators to hone in on points that Hatch began to make in this session.
HATCH: Well if so how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?
ZUCKERBERG: SENATOR WE RUN ADS.
HATCH: I see. That's great. Whenever a controversy like this arises there's always a danger that congress' response will be to step in and over-regulate. Now that's been the experience I've had in 42 years here. In your view, ....
Senator Fischer asked Zuckerberg more specific questions about just how many data points Facebook stores on each Facebook user, is it really 96 data points per user as one little-seen journalistic report had published? Facebook, until then, had not divulged that answer to the public because the question had not been asked in a forum where there was pressure to answer, such as a forum where many users were watching.
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
