Facebook CEO: Social media regulation ‘inevitable’

In his second day of public testimony on Capitol Hill, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told House lawmakers Wednesday he believes the government will regulate social media eventually. “The internet is growing in importance around the world in people’s lives, and I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation,” Zuckerberg said before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “So my position is not that there should be no regulation, but I also think that you have to be careful about regulation you put in place.” His statements Wednesday followed about five hours of questioning by senators on the Judiciary and Commerce committees Tuesday, during which he repeated apologies for mistakenly allowing the firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked with political campaigns, unauthorized access to user data. Zuckerberg acknowledged Wednesday his own personal information had been sold to malicious third parties, as well. In the hearings, lawmakers expressed concern not just about Facebook’s privacy practices but also about its role as a gatekeeper in the marketplace of ideas. “Facebook may decide it needs to police a whole bunch of speech that I think America might be better off not having policed by one company that has a really big and powerful platform,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. said.