WASHINGTON — It’s safe to say Sen. Sherrod Brown is no fan of Facebook’s plan to create a digital currency.

He’s not particularly fond of Facebook, either.

In a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Tuesday, Brown blasted Facebook’s plan to launch a digital currency, rattling off instance after instance when he said Facebook failed to protect its users and made money to the detriment of democracy.

“Facebook is dangerous,” he told David Marcus, head of Calibra, the company that will operate Facebook’s Libra digital currency, comparing the social media giant to “a toddler who has gotten his hands on a book of matches, Facebook has burned down the house over and over, and called every arson a learning experience.”

It’s for that reason, Brown said, that the company has no business launching a digital currency.

“It takes a breathtaking amount of arrogance to look at that track record and think, you know what we really ought to do next? Let’s run our own bank and our own for-profit version of the Federal Reserve for the world,” he said.

“We would be crazy to give them a chance to experiment with people’s bank accounts, and to use powerful tools they don’t understand, like monetary policy, to jeopardize hardworking Americans’ ability to provide for their families.”

Brown offered a long list of examples aimed at demonstrating that the company has long abused the public’s trust. It decimated the newspaper industry by allowing the social media platform to share content without driving any profits to the companies that created that content; it has run psychological experiments that successfully determined they could manipulate moods; it uses an algorithm that drives the most controversial and divisive topics to the top of people’s news feeds.

In at least one instance, he said, the company’s algorithm may have contributed to a genocide: Brown cited a UN report that detailed how Facebook was used to spread propaganda in Myanmar in advance of violence that led to the death of at least 600 members of the Rohingya people and more than 700,000 refugees fleeing the country.

“Facebook has demonstrated, through scandal after scandal, that it does not deserve our trust, and that it should be treated like the profit-seeking corporation it is, just like any other company,” Brown said.

Among others who have expressed concern about the issue are Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who expressed concern about customers’ privacy and raised concerns about the potential of money laundering, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said his agency has “very serious concerns” that the new currency could be used by money launderers and terrorist financiers.

But some on the Senate Banking Committee said the new currency shows promise. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, said Libra “could be a constructive innovation in financial services.”

“To announce in advance that we have to strangle this baby in the crib, I think, is wildly premature,” he said.

And Banking Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said, “despite the uncertainties, Facebook’s stated goals for the payments systems are commendable.”

But Brown made it clear he thought the new currency has the potential to rip off the very consumers it serves, asking Marcus “do you really think people should trust Facebook with their hard-earned money?”

Marcus said while the company has “made mistakes in the past,” they’ve “been working and continue to work really hard to get better.”

Brown asked Marcus if he’d pledge to accept 100 percent of his compensation in Facebook currency. Marcus, after some back and forth, said he would.

And Brown asked Marcus if he’d drop the plan to launch the currency after hearing about concerns from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the president and international leaders.

“I will commit again to do what it takes to address these concerns,” Marcus said.

But Brown was not satisfied.

“You really think people should trust you with their bank accounts and the economy?” Brown said. “I think that’s delusional.”

jwehrman@dispatch.com

@jwehrman