INDUSTRY

Tencent "Deep Net" Ji Zhenyu sent from Silicon Valley on April 11

It’s not that Zuckerberg performed well, but that the lawmakers performed too poorly.

After two consecutive days of marathon "question" by congressmen, Facebook founder and CEO Zuckerberg left the impression that he performed "exceeded expectations". Facebook's stock price even showed the largest single-day increase in the past two years on the first day, and Zuckerberg's personal net worth soared by nearly $3 billion after the end of the day.

The Congressional Hall is naturally not a place to make Zuckerberg feel comfortable. In order to prepare for these two hearings, Zuckerberg came to Washington, DC a day early. Washington was still chilly in early April. Most of the people here wore dark gray coats, looked solemn and walked in a hurry. This is completely different from the bright and warm California. This is not the moment when he can wear T-shirts and shorts, barbecue with his wife and children in his backyard to make online video live broadcasts, and chat with millions of Facebook users easily.

He had to wear a dark blue slim suit tailored for him, tied a tie, sat upright behind the table with the famous brand "Mr. Zuckberg", and lived in the same room with dozens of senators and hundreds of media reporters, and survived the next five and a half hours of hearing.

“He was nervous, but he seemed confident,” said a person at the scene. “He was a smart man.”

Before he could sit down, Zuckerberg was surrounded by a wall of humans surrounded by dozens of live photographers. Every angle and every detail of his movements and expressions was ruthlessly exposed to the cold camera.

But Zuckerberg obviously came prepared. Sitting in the hearing table, he kept his upper body straight, listened carefully to every question, and made eye contact with the MP who asked him. He changed his habit of adding "so" tone when answering questions, but first called the other person who asked him a question with "Senator", "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" and then answered.

On his desk was a response outline prepared by his team for him in advance. During the intermission of the hearing, the media on the scene took a photo of one of the pages. The thick stack of paper basically involved all the questions that the MPs might ask in advance. His seat was placed on a thick cushion, which was perhaps carefully prepared by the team for him, in order to make him look taller in front of the camera and more in line with the image of a leader in times of crisis.

Despite swallowing from time to time, embarrassing expressions or holding up the water cup frequently, Zuckerberg, who appears in Congress, is not the image of a young entrepreneur we are familiar with in the past who is wearing a grey hoodie and speaking fast and saying "act quickly and break everything", but is the image of a well-trained and resilient CEO, the leader that a company in crisis needs.

On the other hand, the performance of dozens of congressmen sitting opposite Zuckerberg at the hearing was disappointing. In other words, people never had too much expectations for this hearing. Dozens of questions exposed the complete gap between these political circles and the 21st century technology circle. The many questions and answers between them and Zuckerberg seemed to be talking to themselves under their respective context systems, and many embarrassing moments appeared.

For example, a member of lawmaker asked, “How do you maintain your business if the user does not have to pay for the services you provide?”

Zuckerberg paused for a moment and said, “Senator, we sell ads.”

“Oh, that’s right.” said the senator.

One lawmaker said, "My 13-year-old son Charlie is an active Instagram user (Facebook's image sharing app) and he asked me to make sure I mentioned him today.”

Another MP said, “If I send an email through Whatsapp, a Facebook messaging app, will this let advertisers know the information?”

Many of the issues of lawmakers exposed their ignorance about some of the most basic Internet common sense or Facebook company, and a user on Twitter even sarcastically said, "The average age of these lawmakers is already 100 years old.”

During the entire hearing, the members' issues still lacked focus, and were often boundless, and circled around some irrelevant issues.

Under the question of "not being strong" among lawmakers, Zuckerberg was able to complete the established tasks of the two days in an orderly manner according to the strategies designed by the team before: admitting mistakes, apologizing, not giving positive or negative answers to specific questions, leaving them to the team for follow-up, not making promises, not denying the current business model, and not being too greedy.

Michael Connor, executive director of Open MIC, commented that Zuckerberg's hearing performance can only be considered "barely passed" and cannot be said to be "excellent".The agency, which represents Facebook investors, publicly called on Zuckerberg to resign from all Facebook positions the day before the hearing began.

The hearing was initiated by Facebook's large-scale user data leak, as the whistleblower said the big data company Cambridge Analytica uses large amounts of user data obtained from Facebook to conduct precise political advertising to influence political activities, and the incident may involve 87 million Facebook users, most of whom are located in the United States, has attracted the attention of Washington.

Other keywords of this incident are "Russian manipulation" and "US presidential election", which have touched US national security and core interests.This hearing is inevitable due to responsibility for voters in their respective constituencies.

But the performance of the MPs attending the hearing may not even be able to meet the standard of "passing".The ultimate purpose of the hearing is to enable these legislators to better understand the situation, and ultimately at least form a consensus on certain existing problems and resolve them through legislative procedures. Although Zuckerberg himself clearly expressed his willingness to accept "correct supervision" during the hearing, at least judging from the situation at the hearing in the past two days, there is little hope to achieve the above purpose.

Another embarrassing fact is that most of the nearly 100 lawmakers who participated in the hearing have received political donations from Facebook directly or indirectly.Facebook has invested a total of $7 million in political donations over the past 12 years, and from 2014 to the present, lawmakers questioning Zuckerberg have received more than 640,000 political donations from Facebook.

The two-day hearing was rated as "modical" by a Twitter user and had no "substantial significance". If Zuckerberg showed a nervous expression from time to time at the first day of the hearing, he was completely calm the next day. When the lawmaker who presided over the entire hearing proposed to take a break, Zuckerberg replied, "Why do you have a few more questions?"U.S. News Network CNN commented that after the two-day hearing, Zuckerberg was able to escape unscathed.