Facebook CEO Zuckerberg takes on lawmakers: What we learned

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg completed a second round of intense questioning on Capitol Hill Wednesday, where lawmakers focused heavily on privacy and political bias concerns.

While accepting full responsibility for the data privacy scandal that compromised user information, Zuckerberg was hesitant to commit to any specific regulation proposed by members of Congress this week to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Here are some of the highlights from Zuckerberg’s testimony:

Zuckerberg’s private information was stolen, too

The tech mogul on Wednesday admitted that his personal data was stolen by a third-party app developer and eventually sold to Cambridge Analytica, along with that of 87 million other users on the platform.

Regulation may be necessary

Throughout the past two days, Zuckerberg repeatedly stated that he was not against regulation, but that it was important to determine what type of regulation would be the most beneficial for the technology sector.

He also said implementing regulation could put smaller companies at a disadvantage because they don’t always have the level of resources necessary to comply.

Audit of apps will take months to complete

In the wake of the revelation that an app developer was able to access the personal information of tens of millions of users, Facebook is launching an investigation into all the apps that have used its platform and enjoyed access to a large number of users.

That process, however, will take a while to complete, the entrepreneur noted.

Facebook does not record audio conversations

When questioned about whether Facebook can listen in on, and record, conversations through a mobile device’s microphone, Zuckerberg denied that the platform engages in those practices. He said on Tuesday that the only access the site has to a microphone is when a user posts a video using audio.

Facebook does not store data in Russia

Amid concerns that Facebook’s database could be used to provide information to Russia or other hostile actors, Zuckerberg said not only does the company not store data in the country, but it has never given information to Russian officials, either.

“I have no specific knowledge of any data that we’ve ever given to Russia,” he told lawmakers, adding that he was not aware of any activity in Moscow or China to scrape Facebook data.

Zuckerberg said the only time his company will work with another country is if there’s a valid law enforcement request.

Facebook has made content review mistakes

House lawmakers on Wednesday drilled down on Zuckerberg for a number of incidents when conservative content was rejected or blocked from its platform.

Zuckerberg copped to making errors, saying that unfortunately it is impossible for his staff to review and process each content request with 100% accuracy.

However, the tech mogul said mistakes don’t just happen for Facebook’s conservative members.

“We’ve heard today a number examples where we may have made content review mistakes on conservative content, but I can assure you there are a lot of folks who think we’ve made ... mistakes on liberal content as well,” he said.