Tencent "Deep Web" Ji Zhenyu reports from Silicon Valley on April 11
It wasn't that Zuckerberg performed particularly well, but that the lawmakers performed terribly.
After two consecutive days of marathon congressional hearings, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg left the public with an impression of performing "beyond expectations." Facebook's stock price even saw its biggest single-day gain in two years on the first day, and Zuckerberg's personal wealth surged by nearly $3 billion by the end of that day.
The congressional hearing room is naturally not a comfortable place for Zuckerberg. To prepare for these two hearings, he arrived in Washington, D.C., a day early. In early April, Washington was still chilly with spring cold, and most people there wore dark gray overcoats, with solemn expressions and hurried steps. It was a completely different world from sunny and warm California. This was not a moment for him to wear a T-shirt and shorts, barbecue with his wife and children in his backyard, livestream online, or chat casually with millions of Facebook users.
He had to put on a custom-fitted dark blue suit and tie, sit upright behind a table bearing the nameplate "Mr. Zuckerberg," and share the room with dozens of senators and hundreds of journalists, enduring the next five and a half hours of hearings.
"He was nervous, but he appeared confident," one person at the scene described. "He's a smart guy."
Before even sitting down, Zuckerberg was surrounded by a wall of dozens of on-site photographers. Every angle of his body, every detail of his expressions and movements, was ruthlessly exposed before the cold lenses.
But Zuckerberg was clearly prepared. Sitting at the hearing, he kept his back straight, listened carefully to every question, maintained eye contact with the questioning senators, changed his habit of starting answers with "so," and instead addressed the questioners as "Senator," "Congressman," or "Congresswoman" before answering.
On his desk lay response outlines prepared in advance by his team. During the hearing recess,现场 media photographed one of the pages—a thick stack of paper that basically covered all possible questions from senators. His chair had a thick cushion, possibly also精心 prepared by his team to make him appear taller and more符合 the image of a leader in a crisis moment.
Although he occasionally swallowed hard, looked embarrassed, or frequently raised his water glass, Zuckerberg in Congress was not the young entrepreneur in a gray hoodie with rapid speech and the phrase "move fast and break things" that we knew before, but a well-trained CEO who could handle the situation—the kind of leader a company in crisis needs.
In contrast, the dozens of congressmen sitting across from Zuckerberg showed disappointing results, or rather, people never had high hopes for these hearings. Dozens of questions exposed these politicians' complete disconnection from the 21st-century tech world. TheirMany questions and answers with Zuckerberg仿佛 were conversations in different contexts, with Many awkward moments.
For example, one congressman asked: "If users don't pay for your service, how do you support your company's operations?"
Zuckerberg paused and said: "Senator, we sell advertising."
"Oh, I see," the senator said.
One congressman said: "My 13-year-old son Charlie is an active Instagram (Facebook's photo-sharing app) user, and he asked me to mention him today."
Another congressman asked: "If I send an email through Whatsapp (Facebook's messaging app), will that allow advertisers to know the content?"
Many questions from congressmen exposed their ignorance of basic internet knowledge or Facebook as a company. One Twitter user even sarcastically noted: "The average age of these congressmen is already 100 years old."
Throughout the hearings, the congressmen's questions also lacked focus, often wandering around irrelevant topics.
Under the "unconvincing" questions of the congressmen, Zuckerberg was able to fully follow the strategy designed by his team: admit mistakes, apologize, give no definitive answers to specific questions, leave them for follow-up by the team, make no promises, not deny the current business model, and not appear overly greedy.
Open MIC Executive Director Michael Connor described Zuckerberg's hearing performance as merely "passing," not "excellent." This organization, representing Facebook investors, publicly called for Zuckerberg to resign from all positions at Facebook the day before the hearings.
The hearings were initiated in connection with the major Facebook user data breach. An informant stated that data processing company Cambridge Analytica used extensive user data obtained from Facebook for precise political advertising targeting to influence political activities. The event may involve 87 million Facebook users, most of whom are in the US, which attracted Washington's attention.
Key words of this event: "Russian interference," "US presidential elections," which touch on national security and core US interests. Out of responsibility to voters in their constituencies, these hearings were inevitable.
However, the performance of the participating congressmen in the hearings may not even meet the "passing" standard. The ultimate goal of the hearings is to help lawmakers better understand the situation, ultimately form a unified view on certain existing problems, and solve them through legislative procedures. Although Zuckerberg himself also clearly expressed willingness to accept "correct regulation" during the hearings, at least judging by the two days of hearings, hopes of achieving上述 goals are slim.
Another awkward fact is that among the nearly 100 congressmen participating in the hearings, most directly or indirectly received political donations from Facebook. Over the past 12 years, Facebook has invested a total of $700 million in political donations. Since 2014, the congressmen who questioned Zuckerberg have received more than $640,000 in political donations from Facebook.
The two-day hearings were described by one Twitter user as "going through the motions," without "substantive meaning." If on the first day of hearings Zuckerberg occasionally looked nervous, on the second day he was completely composed. When the congressman presiding over the hearings proposed a break, Zuckerberg replied: "Maybe a few more questions?" American news network CNN noted that after two days of hearings, Zuckerberg was able to emerge unscathed.