2. It is not hard to pro-actively remove illegal prescription drug ads like the ones presented to him during the hearing. It doesn’t even require AI.

Zuckerberg claiming that Facebook needs to develop AI tools to remove illegal prescription drug sales.

Zuckerberg said: “What we need to do is build more AI tools that can pro-actively find that content” (2:19:33 of House hearing). He was defending Facebook’s inability to take down prescription drug ads and posts from Facebook, but this statement was at the least misleading. It doesn’t require AI or anything sophisticated to automatically remove the bulk of these ads. A few if-else statements would remove most of them and would provide at least a temporary solution. Just look at the below example and think how quickly you could write a script to remove such content.

3. Facebook does actually give user data to advertisers

Zuckerberg repeatedly made statements such as, “Mr. Chairman, you’re right that we don’t sell any data” (0:19:40 of House hearing). I take great exception to this because even if there is not a direct transaction with advertisers of user data for money, there is certainly an indirect transaction that in effect provides the advertisers with user data. Anyone who has run an ad on Facebook understands this. Facebook data allow advertisers to track how individual users interact with their ads, and due to the highly targeted nature of these ads, these interactions reveal a wealth of data about Facebook users.

Even apart from these details of how Facebook targeted advertising works, Zuckerberg said at one point that Facebook doesn’t give user data to advertisers. This is patently false. You can verify this by using the “Download a copy of your Facebook data” feature. There is a section in the Facebook data archive for “Ads” where you can see a list of advertisers who have your contact information. I did this a few weeks ago, and the below picture shows how it looked. I have intentionally kept this list somewhat illegible because the list itself reveals quite a lot of personal data. The main point is, it is a long list, and it proves Mark is either grossly misinformed about what Facebook does or is actually lying before Congress.

4. Facebook doesn’t delete your content when you ask them to.

Zuckerberg claims that users own their data and can delete it when they want.

Many times during his testimony, Zuckerberg said that Facebook users “own their data” and can delete it when they want to (e.g. “They can delete that data any time they want.” at 2:05:33 of Senate hearing and “You can take it down if you want.” at 2:07:15 of Senate hearing), but this is demonstrably false. I am including below a redacted screenshot from privacy advocate, Max Schrems, that illustrates this, but anyone with a Facebook account can verify that this is the case by deleting some piece of content and then using the “Download a copy of your Facebook data” feature to see that the content was not actually deleted.

What can we do about it?

For those who are US citizens, I ask you to consider for a moment the gravity of the fact that the CEO of one of the world’s most powerful companies is outright lying to the Congress. I urge you to contact your representatives and demand that they hold Mr. Zuckerberg to account. Congress clearly needs our help to understand some of the technical details of Facebook. It was obvious from some of the exchanges during the Zuckerberg hearing that many members of Congress have no idea how Facebook works. Let’s not allow Zuckerberg to pull the wool over Congress’s eyes, which are in many ways the eyes of the American people.

If you are not a US citizen, please help spread this article (or your own version of it) across the Internet. Urge your friends to reconsider using a service run by a person who clearly is willing to lie to preserve his wealth and power. Any further attention we can bring to this issue will keep it in the headlines, which will pressure governments to act.

Lastly, consider supporting Pondenome, an initiative I started recently to offer the world a privacy-by-design alternative to Facebook.