US lawmakers have their first chance to "chat" with Facebook Inc.'s chief executive Mr Mark Zuckerberg. The congressional meeting is scheduled for tomorrow and tomorrow (Tuesday and Wednesday), and elected representatives of the American people will have the opportunity to rate Facebook.

But because politicians are not always well informed about how data collection works through social networks, the editors of Bloomberg View and Bloomberg Gadfly gathered a list of questions that Congress members could ask Mr. Mark Zuckerberg to to take serious responses to the serious issues at stake.

See more articles from iGuRu.gr when you search for news on Google.

iGuRu.gr preferred source

38 Questions to Mark Zuckerberg

Data and privacy

Stephen L. Carter: Facebook collects a lot of information from its users. Would you say that this data belongs to Facebook or to the user from whom it is collected?

Shira Ovide: Do you think average Facebook users, including your parents, understand that Facebook collects information from websites and apps that have nothing to do with Facebook, including all websites with “Like” buttons? Do you agree to limit data collection to only activities within Facebook and other digital services owned by Facebook?

Joe Nocera: Do you have any objections to asking your members' permission to share their data? If so, why?

Michael R. Strain: Many people worry that Facebook is so dominant that it's too difficult for other companies to compete. One solution to this might be to redistribute ownership of Facebook users' social graphs. Do you think user ownership of social graphs is a good idea? If not, why not?

Scott Duke Kominers: Will Facebook contact any individual whose data was misused to explain what information was collected, how it was shared, and how it was used? Will Facebook take steps to compensate these individuals?

Alex Webb: Apple uses a process it calls “differential privacy” to anonymize the data it collects from its users. What’s stopping Facebook from doing the same?

Barry Ritholtz: How much would Facebook charge its users for a monthly subscription with zero off-platform tracking, no ads, and periodic permanent deletion of all internal Facebook data?

Alex Webb: What will Facebook do to reduce its reliance on user data as a source of revenue?

Russian interference

Shira Ovide: Do you regret saying right after the U.S. presidential election that it was “ a really crazy idea ” that information from Facebook could have influenced the presidential election?

Cathy O'Neil: What are you going to do about Russia?

• Have you investigated whether Russian ads have influenced 2016 voter turnout? If not, why not?
• Have you collected the right data to do it?
• Do you now collect the right data?
• Are you performing random experiments so you can run such tests in future election cycles?

Eli Lake: Could you review Russia's overall online advertising campaign?

Impact on society

Leonid Bershidsky: Which do you think is the biggest breach of trust:

• Allowing developers to have people's data without their consent?
• Is the news spread that you know fake?
• Receiving ads that you know are malicious? or
• the fact that you do not allow advertisers to control the way their ads are displayed?

Please sort the order.

Conor Sen: Facebook’s user experience, with posts driven by algorithms that aim to maximize engagement, is highly successful, perhaps too successful. The question raised by SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff is a good one: Is the social harm of Facebook addiction so damaging that it should be regulated like cigarettes?

Ramesh Ponnuru: A long time ago, people would read the news in print or watch a channel. They could choose which stories they read and they could know who was telling them. With your company, more and more people are learning about the world from machines that use processes that almost none of them understand. Can you describe the process by which some stories are published first and others are not? Can you describe it without using the word “algorithm”? What do you think people should know about this process?

Matthew Winkler: According to recent research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), fake news travels faster than true stories. How can Facebook stop this journey?

Conor Sen: Why have news publications and political advertising on Facebook received a regulatory exemption while traditional media outlets have not?

Virginia Postrel: What control does Facebook exercise over the ads it accepts? What reasonable standards of accountability could it apply to advertising?

Eli Lake: In recent years, a growing number of activists have complained about their pages on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms not being displayed. This banning practice is opaque. Could you tell us if Facebook has a banning practice and, if so, how you determine which pages should be displayed?

Culture on Facebook

Stephen L. Carter: Is Facebook concerned about the political or ideological opinions of its employees when hiring and promoting?

Shira Ovide: Throughout Facebook’s 14-year history, there have been repeated controversies over the company’s data collection policies or privacy violations. First, does Facebook believe it has complied with the FTC settlement ? And second, do the repeated, persistent user privacy controversies throughout Facebook’s history indicate that something is wrong with the company?

Alex Webb: When was the last time an employee mentioned that one of your suggestions (referring to Mark Zuckerberg as CEO) was a bad idea?

Shira Ovide: In 2016, one of your senior executives, Andrew Bosworth, released a deliberately provocative internal memo that outlined drawbacks to your effort to connect the world.

"Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated by our tools," the memo said. This goes against what you said in interviews last year, that Facebook can actually predict potential risks. Why hasn't he done it?

Adam Minter: In July 2009, the Chinese government blocked Facebook from appearing in China. The exact reason remains unclear, but it fits into an overall pattern. The Chinese government does not want a social media platform – foreign or domestic – to operate in China unless it complies with local laws. It is no secret that you want to see Facebook in China (Mark Zuckerberg’s wife is Chinese). Could you tell the committee whether you are willing to agree to China’s demands?

Finally, a general advice for legislators

Jonathan Bernstein: This kind of listening and celebrity is not about politics. This is not bad. So you can ask Mark Zuckerberg the most striking question. The goal is to create publicity.

• Facebook Cambridge Analytica: The Role and Silence of Science
• Facebook: how can you become totally invisible

giorgos

George is still wondering what he is doing here….