The hearings on Tuesday in the Senate at which Mark Zuckerberg—ably portrayed once on the screen by Michael Fassbender in Prometheus—apologized for Facebook’s role in the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 presidential election was one of the more surreal spectacles in the history of the world’s greatest deliberative body.

The ostensible subject was how Facebook handled a firm called Cambridge Analytica, a company with ties to the Mercers, a prime conservative sugar-family, which, in turn, had ties to the Trump campaign. The actual testimony, however, was a glimpse into how an 18th century institution, run primarily by 20th century white men, tries to cope with 21st century technology and its application to electoral chicanery. Most of them would have been better off letting their grandchildren question Zuckerberg.

For his part, Zuckerberg spent a lot of time apologizing for how easily his company got gamed by CA and, through that company, by the Russian cyber-Segrettis.

“One of my greatest regrets in running the company is that we were slow in identifying the Russian information operations in 2016. We have kicked off an investigation … I imagine we’ll find some things…There are people in Russia whose job it is to try to exploit our systems and other internet systems and other systems as well…This is an ongoing arms race. As long as there are people sitting in Russia whose job is it to try to interfere in elections around the world, this is going to be an ongoing conflict.”

I certainly am reassured that tech-savvy youngsters like Chuck Grassley and Pat Leahy are on the barricades on my behalf.

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Of course, this was old territory for Zuckerberg, who, as Vox kindly pointed out, has been apologizing for one invasion of privacy or another since he was a young Zuck in college.

Online social networks obviously pose some novel legal and regulatory issues. But broadly speaking, the question of how to ensure that companies discharge their responsibilities is not a brand new one. Companies involved in the provision of health care are responsible — not just morally but legally and financially — to abide by the terms of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. That law hasn’t eliminated all privacy violations in the health care space, by any means, but when violations occur, they are punished, and the punishment gives actors in that space real reason to avoid them. Financial institutions, similarly, must comply with the privacy rules set out in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. GLBA compliance has thus become its own somewhat tedious mini industry, with lawyers and specialized GLBA compliance firms you can hire.

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Similarly, Congress has traditionally recognized the role of journalism in American society. The US Postal Service delivers periodicals at a discount rate, and the Federal Communication Commission’s television station licensing requirements include a vague but meaningful “public interest” standard that is generally held to require both the production of local newscasts and the airing of major national news events. A station that too flagrantly violated these norms would be accountable, legally and financially, to a regulatory body.

Internet messianism always has made my skin itch just a little, and I think it pretty much died on Tuesday before the Senate. The members of the committee may have been several parsecs behind the times, but Zuckerberg came off not like a social and cultural visionary, but like just another reckless billionaire capitalist, clinging to his profits at all costs. He was the coal executive whose mine blew up. He was the oil baron whose tanker ran aground. Again, from Vox:

Once upon a time, the US government wisely believed that it would be a bad idea to subject promising young internet startups to the bureaucratic morass involved in things like HIPAA or GLBA compliance. But the young internet startups are all grown up now, and can easily afford to hire vast armies of lawyers and compliance experts who will help them avoid breaches that lead to massive fines. There is no longer a need to treat Facebook like a delicate flower whose agility will vaporize if it is held legally accountable for its actions.

God love him, though, Tailgunner Ted Cruz came to the hearing with his own clear agenda, and it didn’t have anything to do with Cambridge Analytica—about which more anon—or the issues of privacy in the new millennium. No, the Tailgunner was most concerned about establishing social media as another context in which weepy conservatives could drive the nails through the palms of their own hands.

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In case you haven’t been keeping up, the conservative self-martyrdom industry is in full cry these days over how their speech is being oppressed by Facebook and Twitter. The primary martyrs at the moment are Diamond and Silk, the very weird Trump apologists, and a guy with the Hammett-esque monicker of Palmer Luckey, a tech zillionaire who got bounced from a business relationship with Facebook because he was financing anti-Clinton and pro-Trump efforts, and because he was sock-puppeting anti-Clinton messages on Reddit.

I mention all this because I guarantee that this is going to be the main diversion over the next few months while the investigations into the Russian ratfcking heat up. And, on Tuesday, the Tailgunner was prepared to go Full McCarthy on Zuckerberg.

Cruz: “In your testimony, you say that you have 15,000 to 20,000 people working on security and content review. Do you know the political orientation of those 15,000 to 20,000 people engaged in content review?”

Zuckerberg: “No, Senator. We do not generally ask people about their political orientation when they’re joining the company.”

Cruz: “So as CEO, have you made hiring or firing decisions based on political positions or what candidates they supported?”

Zuckerberg: “No.”

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Cruz: “Why was Palmer Luckey fired?”

Zuckerberg: “That is a specific personnel matter that seems like it would be inappropriate to speak to here.”

Cruz: “You made a specific representation that you didn’t make decisions based on political views. Is that accurate?”

Zuckerberg: “I can commit that it was not because of a political view.”

Cruz: “Do you know of the 15,000 to 20,000 people engaged in content review, how many, if any, have ever supported financially a Republican candidate for office?”

Zuckerberg: “Senator, I do not know that.”

This is the pure, are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been? stuff. It’s going to give the Tailgunner a lot of video to use in his re-election ads against Beto O’Rourke in Texas.

Zuckerberg came off not like a social and cultural visionary, but like just another reckless billionaire capitalist.

But, as many people have noted, Cruz somehow forgot to mention the fact that, during the 2016 election, it was his presidential campaign that was Cambridge Analytica’s first choice, which The Guardian hipped us to back in 2015.

A little-known data company, now embedded within Cruz’s campaign and indirectly financed by his primary billionaire benefactor, paid researchers at Cambridge University to gather detailed psychological profiles about the US electorate using a massive pool of mainly unwitting US Facebook users built with an online survey. As part of an aggressive new voter-targeting operation, Cambridge Analytica – financially supported by reclusive hedge fund magnate and leading Republican donor Robert Mercer – is now using so-called “psychographic profiles” of US citizens in order to help win Cruz votes, despite earlier concerns and red flags from potential survey-takers. Documents seen by the Guardian have uncovered longstanding ethical and privacy issues about the way academics hoovered up personal data by accessing a vast set of US Facebook profiles, in order to build sophisticated models of users’ personalities without their knowledge.

Jesus, Zuck. You’re a smart guy. How did you let that fat one go by? And, on Wednesday, he went before the House of Representatives. If he liked Ted Cruz, he’s going to love Marsha Blackburn.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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