Mocking Congress Won’t Make It Tech Literate

The Zuckerberg hearing highlighted Washington’s alarming ignorance of Facebook — and it’s anything but funny

Photo: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Well, it’s going to be hard to regulate Facebook when politicians know less about how social media works than their grandkids do.

That was one of the biggest takeaways of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance on April 10 before both the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee to discuss data privacy and Russian disinformation. And this is especially so when ignorance on the political side allows the chairman and chief executive officer of Facebook to look like a helpful and earnest young’un who just wants senior citizens to be comfortable in the oh-so-confusing and complicated digital age.

Sadly, these illustrative headlines aren’t clickbait:

• “‘Senator, I Think We Already Do’: Zuckerberg’s Interrogation Turns into Tech Support” (Vanity Fair)
• “Lawmakers seem confused about what Facebook does — and how to fix it” (Vox)
• “A Bunch of Senators Just Showed They Have No Idea How Facebook Works. They Want to Regulate It Anyway” (Reason)