Facebook’s Zuckerberg and his European Parliament grilling

At the end the much anticipated grilling ended up with more questions than answers. The pertinent points raised by various MEPs, were not all answered by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

By the end of the hearing, some European politicians complained that Zuckerberg had not answered their questions. “I asked you six yes-and-no questions, and I got not a single answer,” Guy Verhofstadt said. Zuckerberg paused and then responded, “I’ll make sure we follow up and get you answers to those.”

Zuckerberg apologised to the European Parliament for a massive data leak that put users’ data in the hands of political consultancy group Cambridge Analytica. The CEO met with European Parliament lawmakers on Tuesday, three days before the new EU rules on data protection take effect.

The meeting was attended by the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, the leaders of the parliament’s political groups and the chair of the civil liberties committee, Claude Moraes.

Euronews reported that in his opening remarks, Zuckerberg said it had “become clear over the last couple of years that we haven’t done enough to prevent the tools we’ve built from being used for harm as well.

“Whether it’s fake news, foreign interference in elections or developers misusing people’s information, we didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibilities. That was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”