Facebook Avoids Answering Dozens of Follow-Up Questions from Senate

Facebook finally responded to follow-up questions from senators following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing in front of Congress in April, however, the company opted to avoid answering dozens of questions.

Despite Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) formally requesting in his questions for Facebook to “provide a wholly contained answer to each question,” which “should not cross-reference answers provided in other questions,” Facebook disregarded this request and avoided questions, including simple “yes or no” questions, by deferring Cruz to other generic answers at least 69 times.

Instead of answering each question, as requested, many questions were answered with, “See response to question [X],” while in others, they claimed not to “maintain statistics on these data points.”

Facebook refused to directly answer Cruz’s questions whether Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, the Bible, criticism of Islam, and anti-immigration opinions constitute as “hate speech” on the platform.

Facebook did, however, reveal the various pieces of user information which they track, including mouse movements, file names, photos, text messages, and other apps and games you use.

During Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees in April, the Facebook CEO replied, “I’ll have my team get back to you,” or some other variation of the same answer at least 21 times.

Zuckerberg also declined to share Facebook’s definition of “hate speech,” and dodged a number of questions.