Britain’s Syed Kamall up next. He reassures Zuckerberg that they aren’t here to try and crush a successful business, but notes concerns – particularly around the company’s gathering of data on non-Facebook users.
“I know that by having my own Facebook account, I take some responsibility… but if I don’t have a Facebook account, is the only way to stop Facebook collecting my data by staying off the internet altogether? Is it morally acceptable to collect non-Facebook users’ data without them knowing what you do with it?”
“Are you ready to completely comply with the new regulation in Europe within the next three days,” Bullmann asks. “Can you guarantee Facebook is in line with the new rules, and that Facebook won’t sell data to third parties without proper consent?”
“How can you guarantee that no manipulation of the forthcoming vote will happen? In which way will you adapt your business model to ensure that can happen?”
Bullmann’s questions, he says, are about “the right of self-government of nations.”
On to the questions: oddly, every MEP is asking their questions at once, and then Zuckerberg will answer them all at the end.
“Is Cambridge Analytica an isolated case… can you guarantee that another scandal will not happen in 3,6,9 months time,” asks German MEP Manfred Weber, and “did you personally make the decision in 2015 to not notify your users?”
“Between Europe and America, we have a different understanding of what is allowed and not allowed to publish,” Weber adds. “I see a lot of member states at the moment asking Facebook to voluntarily ban messages [such as glorification of nazisim]”, he says, adding that “asking” should be “telling”.
And finally, directly: can Zuckerberg name a competitor? Would he describe Facebook as a monopoly? “Can you convince me not to break up Facebook?”
“Facebook plays a positive role in elections around the world by helping leaders like you connect directly with voters,” Zuckerberg says. “I am determined to keep building tools that bring people together in meaningful ways.”
“We’re very committed to Europe,” he adds. Dublin is the international headquarters, London the largest non-US engineering corps, Paris a chunk of the AI workforce. By the end of this year, the company will employ more than 10,000 Europeans, he says.
“Now let’s turn to elections,” Zuckerberg says. “In 2016, we were too slow to identify Russian interference on Facebook in the US presidential election. At the time we were more focused on traditional cyberattacks.
“Since then, we’ve made significant investments to make this sort of attack harder to do on Facebook. We’ve done a better job since 2016, including in the French Elections, the German elections, and the Alabama special election.”
Zuckerberg cites the company’s tracking and removal of fake accounts, as well as its removal of the ways in which fake news spammers can make money, as examples of changes that have improved Facebook’s ecosystem.
He also brings up Facebook’s recent creation of advertising transparency tools, promising that they’ll launch globally this summer.
GDPR next. “We’ve always shared these values… and now, we’re going even further to comply with these strong new rules. We’re making the same controls and settings available to people from around the world.”
Zuckerberg teases the company’s forthcoming “clear history” setting, which will let users remove Facebook’s profiling and browser tracking.
On to Cambridge Analytica, where Zuckerberg runs through the list of changes the company has already made or promised to make as a result of the scandal: limiting the amount of data apps can gather, advising users to check their app privacy settings, and investigating all apps that received significant amounts of personal data under the previous regime.
“We’ve investigated thousands of apps, and suspended more than 200.”
Zuckerberg is up with his opening statement. He highlights the company’s safety check tool, helping in the midst of terror attacks; refugees using Facebook to keep in touch with people at home; small businesses using Facebook’s tools to operate online.
“But it’s also clear that we haven’t done enough to prevent those tools being misused… that was a mistake, and I’m sorry for it.”
He commits to doubling the number of people working on the company’s security, and notes it will “significantly impact our profitability – but keeping people safe will always be more important than our profits.”
For anyone hoping for more in-depth questions than we got from the US Congress, we’ve just heard each MEP gets just three minutes to quiz Zuckerberg – sixty seconds less than the American senators got.
Now we’re off for real. “This is an important mark of respect towards the European parliament and European citizens,” Tajani says in English to Zuckerberg – highlighting why the British parliament feels so snubbed by the Facebook founder’s continued refusal to cross the channel and appear in London.
Tajani notes that, in one year’s time, the European Union will vote in new MEPs, and warns that “democracy should never become a marketing operation, where anyone who buys our data can buy political advantage.”
“We want the major digital companies to respect the rules for the harvesting and use of our data. In a few days, GDPR will enter in to force… today’s meeting is just a starting point as we move towards a new form of governance for digital platforms.”
Mark Zuckerberg is appearing in front of the European Parliament this evening - leaving British MPs looking on enviously.
The House of Commons select committee investigating fake news has repeatedly asked the Facebook founder to attend one of its hearings, only to be constantly rebuffed. In March Facebook sent a mid-ranking executive to answer questions from the digital, culture, media, and sport select committee. The committee said this was not enough and asked for Zuckerberg.
In April a senior executive was flown in from California to answer hours of questioning. The committee said this was not enough and asked for Zuckerberg.
Eventually MPs ran out of patience and earlier this month threatened Zuckerberg with a formal summons.
Instead, the select committee was reduced to asking Zuckerberg to appear via video link while on his trip to the European parliament, while publishing a list of questions they’d really like MEPs ask.
“If Mark Zuckerberg chooses not to address our questions by directly, we are asking colleagues at the European Parliament to help us get answers- particularly on who knew what at the company, and when, about the data breach and the non-transparent use of political adverts which continue to undermine our democracy,” said committee chair Damian Collins MP.
What can we expect when the closed doors open? Around an hour of European politicians shouting at Mark Zuckerberg for various reasons.
Aside from Farage, who has already previewed his angle of attack, expect three major themes to recur: Cambridge Analytica, GDPR, and Facebook’s monopoly.
The first is the reason why Zuckerberg is speaking to the parliament today. The chief executive’s apology tour began the week after the news broke, in the pages of the Observer, that the social network had handed the personal data of millions of users over to a researcher who incorporated some of it into a model intended for use by the shadowy electoral consultancy.
The second is the more pressing issue for Europe. The privacy mega-regulation, which sees the EU flex its extraterritorial might in an attempt to reshape the internet, has been welcomed by Facebook verbally, even as the company’s actions have left some wondering how seriously the company takes it.
And the third is what’s looming over the whole relationship. Facebook hasn’t yet come under public scrutiny from the EU’s competition commission, which has been focused on Google as the key Silicon Valley monopoly. But that could change at the stroke of a pen from Margrethe Vestager, the competition commissioner, who could make life very difficult indeed for Zuckerberg.
Here’s the picture of Zuckerberg’s arrival that the EP thought was so important, it set up a whole second livestream to broadcast. Perfectly normal behaviour.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg shakes hands with European Parliament president, Antonio Tajani, at the European Parliament in Brussels. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters
It’s started – sort of. Zuckerberg arrived and posed for a handshake picture with EP president Antonio Tajani. Then the pair moved into an adjoining seminar room, where the livestream promptly ended with a door being closed in front of the camera.
When this private one-on-one ends, at around 17.15 UK time, the real event will begin.
Zuckerberg will be speaking to the European parliament’s “conference of presidents”, the committee made up of the leaders of the eight major political groupings of the parliament.
Most recognisable to many readers will be the leader of the nationalist Europe of Freedom and Democracy party, one Nigel Farage MEP. Farage has already promised to use the hearing to attack Zuckerberg over perceived anti-rightwing wing bias on the site, repeating a talking point heard at length in the US congressional hearings:
Conservative MEP Syed Kamall will also be present, as the chairman of the rightwing Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists group. Rounding out the British representation in the room will be Labour MEP Claude Moraes, who’ll be there in his role as chair of the civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee.
Another familiar face amongst the politicians will be Guy Verhofstadt, the European Union’s representative on all matters Brexit. In this hearing, he’ll be attending in his role as the leader of the of the centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s liveblog of Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance in front of the European parliament.
It’s been a fight to get here, with the president of the parliament finally announcing on Monday morning that he had secured an agreement that the previously closed-door session should be live-streamed to the public. If you’d rather watch than follow along here, you’ll find the stream on the parliament’s website.
