The Young Zuckerberg Vs. The Old Congress

A couple of weeks ago Mark Zuckerberg went on trial to talk about the Facebook hack of 2016. (Super quick background, a third party that offered a political quiz if you linked your Facebook sold the information they gathered to Russia.) With so much public outrage on the matter it only made sense that Zuckerberg voluntarily went to talk to the House and Senate and try to clear things up. Little did he know how little they knew.

After over 10 hours of being on trial between the House and Senate it was very clear that they had very little idea what Zuckerberg actually does. Many questions were such surface level easy google search questions I began to wonder if the people who put this trial on even tried to  prepare for it. One Senate member, might I also add the oldest, asked Zuckerberg how he generates revenue which anyone that actually has a Facebook could tell you it’s from Ad’s. The best part was he was still perplexed by the idea after given a pretty simple answer. This is important because it really shows how out of touch these people are. They are suppose to be the ones that make big decisions that affect so many different walks of life. The fact that they couldn't even prepare for one of the most powerful tech moguls in the world gives me little hope that they would even give a second thought to honestly anything that has to do with the general public.

Though this was very embarrassing for a lot of Congress it was the string of pompous questions that none other than our very own Ted Cruz asked Zuckerberg. To sum it up Cruz asked him if he asks his employees what their political orientation is and if he has ever terminated someone because of their answer. This question bothered me the most because he has the audacity to ask a very intelligent successful tech titan who has mass amounts of lawyers if he actively does something illegal. Obviously Zuckerberg said no, but just the fact he tried to entrap him is not smart and just such a waste of time.

The big problem for me with this trial is that it honestly was a waste of time because either no one knew what they were talking about or they were trying to puff out their chest and seem smarter than the very smart man. The whole thing just seemed like a way to get political figures to try and get Zuckerberg to agree that they are smarter than he. Most of all this should've been a very important case that should've brought up the real issue which is the need for some regulation on the internet. Instead it was who is better than who.