With few, if any, signs that Mark Zuckerberg had made new “friends” to help the firm deal with multiple probes, the Facebook chief executive concluded three days of discussions with movers and shakers in Washington, D.C. Zuckerberg, however, garnered some praise for agreeing to long discussions behind closed doors with a bevy of lawmakers and President Donald Trump, Reuters reported.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia arranged for a dinner with the social media executive with other senators and told Fox Business Network, according to the report, “Facebook leadership realizes that failure to have federal legislation [on internet issues] is actually going to hurt them and the whole platform industry in the long run.”
And Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said after the dinner per reports that he had brought up the “repeated failures” of the company in consumer privacy and election security. However, he said in a statement per the outlet, “We had [a] serious, substantive conversation even when we may have differed.”
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said per reports that the talks had been “frank,” which the report said is many times a euphemism for contentious. The lawmaker wanted Facebook to sell its WhatsApp and Instagram units that could limited the data it could compile in regards to a person. Hawley said, according to the report, “Safe to say he was not receptive to those suggestions.”
In other recent news, Facebook revealed it has suspended “tens of thousands” of apps because of an investigation into how developers use its members’ data per reports on Friday (Sept. 20). A blog post by Ime Archibong, VP of product partnerships, reads, in part, “Our review helps us to better understand patterns of abuse in order to root out bad actors among developers.”
Archibong explained that the firm has been taking a close look at the signals of an app potentially abusing Facebook’s policies. If there is a cause for concern, Facebook will then start a more intensive examination.
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