Home United States USA — mix Lawmakers had tough questions after Zuckerberg's last hearing. Here's how he responded.

Lawmakers had tough questions after Zuckerberg's last hearing. Here's how he responded.

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The last time Mark Zuckerberg testified, he left with a homework assignment: to answer more than 100 questions from Democratic representatives
The CEOs of the country’s four largest tech companies will testify Wednesday before the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee Antitrust Subcommittee, which is examining the market dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. For Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, appearances before Congress are becoming old hat: This will be his third such hearing since 2018. The last time, on October 23,2019, he left with a homework assignment: to answer more than 100 questions that Democratic representatives believed weren’t sufficiently answered during his testimony. CBS News obtained his written responses, dated December 30,2019, which have not been previously published. Here are five of the questions and answers followed by the entire document. Follow CBS News’ Antitrust hearing Live Blog here. Representative Maxine Waters cited a study that found extreme disparities in how advertisers for job listings targeted their audiences, noting that “in one extreme case, advertisements for jobs in the lumber industry reached 72% White and 90% male audience.” Waters: “What is Facebook doing to ensure that ads are not used to discriminate? Will you commit to making Facebook’s ads algorithms transparent?” Zuckerberg: Concerns about bias and fairness in algorithms are important — not just for Facebook, but for the industry at large. We take this issue seriously, and we want to be a leader in this space. We’ve built and continue to expand teams working on this issue. As part of the National Fair Housing Alliance (“NFHA”) settlement, we’ve committed to studying the potential for unintended bias, including in our ad delivery algorithms, with input from the civil rights community, industry experts, and academics, and we’ve similarly committed to working toward the right solutions. Waters: What assurances can Facebook give this Committee that you will not allow African Americans to be targeted for voter exclusion and voter suppression? Can Facebook promise this Committee that you will give the exact same protections in your community standards to guarding against census interference that you give to voting interference? Zuckerberg: On both the US 2020 election and the census, we fully understand the stakes. Since 2016, we have prohibited misrepresentations about the dates, locations, times, and qualifications for voting and—ahead of the 2018 midterm elections in the US—we also banned misrepresentations about who can vote, qualifications for voting, and materials required to vote. Our Community Standards also address other types of content about which civil rights groups have previously expressed concerns. For example, our policy on hate speech bans efforts to exclude people from political participation based on their protected characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or religion (e.g., telling people not to vote for a candidate because of the candidate’s ethnicity, or indicating that people of a certain religion should not be allowed to hold office). We also prohibit threats of violence relating to voting, voter registration, or the outcome of an election. And more recently, we have updated our policies to prohibit calls to action or statements of intent to bring weapons to polling places. With respect to the census, we recently announced a new census interference policy that bans misleading information about when and how to participate in the census and the consequences of participating. We are also introducing a new advertising policy that prohibits ads that portray census participation as useless or meaningless or advise people not to participate in the census. These policies are due in large part to the work being done with the civil rights community through our civil rights audit and represent the culmination of a months-long process between Facebook, the US Census Bureau, and experts with diverse backgrounds to develop thoughtful rules around prohibiting census interference on our platforms and making sure people can use their voice to be counted. We look forward to continuing to meet with, listen to, and learn from the civil rights community as we work toward the same end goals of protecting the integrity of our elections and the census and preventing discrimination against and targeting of communities of color.

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