Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

It’s been another tough week for Facebook with its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, being quizzed in front of Congress. He added, “I think we have capacity in 30 languages that we are working on and in addition to that, we have a number of AI tools that we are developing like the ones that I mentioned that can proactively go flag the content”.

“As citizens, we could rally and demand that our leaders address the antitrust problem that is Facebook”, he said.

Anna Johnston, director of Sydney legal firm Salinger Privacy, says it is absurd the man running the company didn’t organise his own privacy settings to protect his personal data. And while its 2.13 billion monthly users don’t pay any money to use the core service, Facebook makes plenty of money – millions daily – by selling access to users’ data to advertisers.

Many web pages are riddled with Facebook and Google trackers, according to a report released past year from German-owned web privacy company Ghostery.

With controversy surrounding Facebook’s collection of users’ information, it is possible to find out exactly how much they know.

“Facemash was a prank website that I launched in college – in my dorm room – before I started Facebook”, he said. “And how much you give away in modern America in the name of, quote, connecting people around the world”.

During Zuckerberg’s second day of questioning on Capitol Hill, California Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo asked, “Was your personal data included in the CA breach?”

“Yes, that’s correct”, he said when DeGette asked since the revelations, Facebook has also not noticed a decrease in user interaction on Facebook.

Sen. Dick Durbin on Tuesday got to the heart of what troubles many people about Facebook’s voracious harvesting of private data.

Zuckerberg’s notes also say that if asked if the company should be broken up, he should say that a breakup of Facebook would benefit Chinese companies.

At a different point in the hearing, he said: “In general, we collect data of people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes”.

“Zuckerberg’s testimony demonstrated that the company has matured over the last decade, in particular in his acknowledgement that Facebook is responsible for the content shared on its platform”, said University of DE communications professor Dannagal Young.

For all the generally polite exchanges in the committee room, feedback after the hearings suggest that lawmakers were not unduly impressed by the Facebook chief and his willingness to institute meaningful change at his company. And Facebook is just one of countless companies that track our online trails for profit.

“This is a wake-up call to Silicon Valley and the tech community that if you let these things get out of hand, having grown up in a very lightly regulated environment, you could end up with a lot more regulation than you seek”, he said after the hearing.

Facebook does have a support page titled,”I don’t have a Facebook account and would like to request all personal data stored by Facebook”.

“We have no reason to believe Facebook won’t share – or otherwise figure out how to exploit – what they collect on kids”, Steyer said this week.