Zuckerberg Touts Facebook ‘Philosophical Shift’ In Face Of Data Scandals

Image by Getty Images
Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told U.S. senators on Tuesday that the company was attempting to change in light of recent criticism, as he attempted to forestall any strict legislation aimed at the world’s largest social network.
The 33-year-old internet mogul was grilled in a joint hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary committees on a range of issues from Facebook’s handling of alleged Russian attempts at election interference to consumer privacy and hate speech.
“We are going through a broad philosophical shift at the company,” said Zuckerberg, wearing a dark suit and tie instead of his typical T-shirt and jeans.
John Thune, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee, struck an adversarial tone in his opening remarks https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?Id=E7C85E5C-BBA9-4AD9-861D-85B7340BBDFB&Statement_id=FF2FADDA-E1B9-46BE-8FB7-0CE98DDA18FA.
“In the past, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been willing to defer to tech companies’ efforts to regulate themselves. But this may be changing,” he said.
Outside the Capitol building, which houses Congress, online protest group Avaaz set up 100 life-sized cutouts of Zuckerberg wearing T-shirts with the words ‘Fix Facebook.’
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Opinion In Trump’s war against campus antisemitism, hate the tactics but don’t ignore the problem
-
Yiddish כ׳בענק נאָך די וועלטלעכע ייִדן וואָס האָבן אָפּגעריכט אַ טראַדיציאָנעלן סדר Longing for those secular Jews who led a traditional seder
מײַן פֿעטער יונה האָט נישט געהיט שבת און כּשרות אָבער בײַם אָפּריכטן דעם סדר האָט ער געקלונגען ווי אַ פֿרומער ייִד
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.