Zuckerberg Irks EU Lawmakers After Dodging Questions

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg left EU lawmakers fuming over unanswered questions at the end of a hearing, according to Bloomberg.

At a meeting at the EU Parliament, Zuckerberg repeated what he’s been telling every audience recently: that his company didn’t take a broad enough view of its responsibility for user data, fake news and foreign interference in elections and that he is sorry for that. But at a session where lawmakers got to ask all their questions in one go at the start, he annoyed them by batting many of them away, including on whether people can opt out of advertising and also on whether the U.S. giant is a monopoly that needs to be broken up.

“Unfortunately the format was a get out of jail free card and gave Mr. Zuckerberg too much room to avoid the difficult questions,“ said Syed Kamall, a British center-right lawmaker, who attended the meeting in Brussels. While most questions focused on how Facebook cares for users’ data, Manfred Weber, the leader of the center-right EPP group, and Guy Verhofstadt, a Liberal former Belgian prime minister, raised a potentially chilling point for Zuckerberg: should it be split up?

Zuckerberg didn’t rise to the bait, but instead pointed out that the company faces stiff competition. “We exist in a very competitive space,“ he said. "The average person uses about eight different tools for communication, it feels like there are new competitors coming up every day.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani defended the Facebook chief’s responses. “He’s not obliged to come. He responded to our offer of a meeting,“ he said. “It lasted more than an hour and a half. There were a large number of questions and he responded to many of them. Everyone knew he had to leave in a hurry. This wasn’t a mandatory hearing.“