Mark Zuckerberg Goes Back to School: Silicon Valley’s First Trial in Washington

The head of the social network seems frightened; nothing will ever be the same.

There was supposed to be a TV trial and that is exactly what happened. The founder and head of one of the richest, most influential businesses in the world, turned into a schoolboy who had to drink water constantly, gave terse answers in an increasingly mechanical fashion and struggled to keep his inner panic at bay while the old foxes in the Senate acted the part of hard-nosed professors at an exam. Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing before Congress will be remembered as a historical moment, with Facebook’s leader, who had already fallen off the world’s pedestal a year ago, being formally put on trial by politics, along with the whole world of Silicon Valley.

A Deep Reform

However, there is no certainty that this process will result in any deep reform that will regulate a digital economy that, until now, has managed to avoid all kinds of constraint. There are several skeptics who believe that, in the end, everything will go back to the way it was before — that Congress will make a fuss and then accept Facebook’s apologies and promises to change direction through serious self-regulation. After all, the Republicans, who hold the majority in both houses of Congress, are the deregulation party. President Donald Trump himself, despite his rage against Amazon, never appeared to want to intervene on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, which were very useful to him during the election campaign.

It Is Unlikely that Everything Will Return to the Way It Was

However, it is unlikely that everything will return to the way it was before Russiagate, the Cambridge Analytica case and the many other matters that keep emerging. While radical reform seems out of the question for now, something has already started to change concerning regulations. The law against pornography on the internet has long been passed and is in force, despite the opposition of Big Tech businesses, which did not want to create a precedent. The Honest Ads Act, a bill meant to regulate campaign ads on the internet presented by two Democratic senators and also supported by the Republican John McCain, has been blocked by Silicon Valley’s granitic opposition up until now. Nevertheless, Zuckerberg, who has been under siege for weeks because of his business’s grave mistakes, had to admit last Friday that a change of direction is necessary, and that the bill being discussed before Congress may be a good solution to ensure the transparency of campaign ads. Just yesterday, Twitter (which is also blamed for political interference) changed its position, too, and declared its support of the Honest Ads Act.

The Age of Innocence Is Over

Yesterday’s hearing revealed that everyone, not just Facebook, has been underestimating the issues of domestic and foreign political interference, privacy protection and the enforcement of the few rules imposed by the Federal Trade Commission. Yesterday’s hearing is therefore likely to be the beginning of a long process. Much like he was before the Senate, Zuckerberg will remain in a difficult position. Aside from politics, he must deal with three other problematic issues. The first is the relationship with users who have suddenly lost faith in the major social network. The second is the one with shareholders, who need reassurance now that they are faced with the possibility of the company’s diminishing profitability and an increase in service management costs. The third problem concerns the relationship with Facebook’s staff. After last year’s defections, the allegations from former employees and the fact that embarrassing internal documents went public, building up morale again will not be easy. Since the age of innocence has (long since) ended, Zuckerberg needs to demonstrate that he can make Facebook’s transition into “adulthood.”