Perhaps the best moment, though, came during his interview with Recode, when he said that though he would theoretically be open to testifying before Congress, he would only do so if it turned out that he, the founder and C.E.O. of the company, is determined to be the proper person to speak on the matter. “I’m open to doing that,” he told Kara Swisher and Kurt Wagner. “We actually do this fairly regularly . . . There are lots of different topics that Congress needs and wants to know about, and the way that we approach it is that our responsibility is to make sure that they have access to all of the information that they need to have. So I’m open to doing it if I’m the right [person].”

The carefully hedged needle-threading continued over at CNN, where Zuck told Laurie Segall that maybe, under the right circumstances, the social-media giant could use a reining in. “I actually am not sure we shouldn’t be regulated,” he said. ”I think in general technology is an increasingly important trend in the world. I think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than ‘yes or no should we be regulated?’”

Though he efforted some impressive forehead wrinkling for the occasion, Zuckerberg did not address what the quote-unquote right regulation would look like, and why Facebook initially declined to notify users that their data had been siphoned in the first place. On the whole, Zuck has gotten better at apologizing over time—less likely to blame the idiot masses for failing to understand how something works, and more likely to make simple alterations to his product, if he knows it will make people feel better about using it. His mea culpa will likely appease the vast majority; so far, most advertisers haven’t pulled their money, and despite the trending #DeleteFacebook hashtag, it’s not clear that users have left en masse. But Zuck’s media tour doesn’t change the fact that Facebook’s core business model relies on data mining. The minority, in other words, will be waiting with bated breath for the company’s next crisis.