While we are all watching to see what will happen to Facebook’s Libra, there is very interesting point to note about Mark Zuckerberg’s recent testimony before the US Congress.
The comments about Libra were not surprising at all and the reaction of congressmen was not either. It seems that Libra is not going to be launched any time soon, as there are many questions and concerns regarding the payments system.
However, one of the Congresswomen, Mrs. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) took to Facebook’s political ads history, noting the infamous case of Cambridge Analyica, a company that allegedly played a major role in the 2016 US Presidential Election.
AOC had an interesting “discussion” with Zuckerberg, especially after she used Twitter to get opinions on what might be good questions to ask the CEO of Facebook. In addition, she serves on the House Financial Services Committee, which was holding the hearing.
Instead of asking regular questions, Ocasio asked a series of hypothetical questions in order to stir the exchange in proving that Facebook has a “historical” problem with trust issues.
One of the questions was:
Under your policy… could I pay to target predominately Black zip codes and advertise them the incorrect election date?
To which Zuckerberg replied that no, she could not be able to do that.
Later, she said:
Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal? I mean, if you’re not fact-checking political advertisements, I’m just trying to understand the bounds here.
Zuckerberg’s answer was that he does not know the answer to that question on top of his head.