« We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. »
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will apologize when he testifies before a House of Representatives committee on Wednesday, saying it was a mistake for his company to take a narrow view of its responsibilities, according to prepared testimony released on Monday.
“Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring,” Zuckerberg will tell members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
However, he will concede, “it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.”
Zuckerberg will lay out his version of what happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election as well as Facebook’s steps to remedy the events. “My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together,” he will say. “Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as I’m running Facebook.”
Zuckerberg will testify at a joint hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committees on Tuesday and before the House committee on Wednesday. He will take questions from members of both houses of Congress as well and is spending Monday on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers.
Read Zuckerberg’s planned remarks:
