I think this is, in a way, an attempt to avoid accountability on the part of Congress. Zuckerberg's approach has had and continues to have issues, definitely, (may I recommend 'Silicon Valley,' HBO's satire on this type) but he has been so richly and wildly rewarded and provided a sort of cart blanche for so long and for what he has chosen to do, I do wonder if he will actually take anything on board or simply write this off as 'cancel culture.' That would make sense from his perspective if you think about it - if I were as 'successful' as him, I'd probably be convinced that this was just jealousy or misunderstanding.

Meanwhile, Congress has had many years to make changes to these regulations as the body count piled up, and they chose to sit it out over and over again for a myriad of reasons, from lack of political capital to misunderstanding to financial interest, etc. In the USA, we have a federal government built to cater to the 1% to such an extent, that this sort of theatrical hearing feels empty to me at this point. I can't help but think that this is on the agenda because of the Taylor Swift deep fakes. I know I should be happy it's on the agenda, but it's frustrating how it got there.

We have very capable and often well-intentioned regulators, just as, I'm sure, businesses have ethical and well-intentioned managers trained at elite institutions who go on to accept elite positions in places like Meta. Yet, too often we let horrible things go on and on because they don't affect anyone with power or money and we act like we're not complicit. Maybe we see no benefit in making a fuss or we feel powerless or we're just too busy or we don't notice. or we just think that's how things work - inaction always has a number of reasons.

Then, when there is a crisis related to power or money, we pick one well-known celebrity who is probably wealthy enough to weather the storm with a fairly comfortable ability to bounce back, and paint that individual as the villain, almost as though by punishing them, we can exonerate ourselves. I'm not certain this is the most effective way to address the issues.

I know that I'm not that influential and that, as a human, I'm likely to overestimate my own intelligence and underestimate the impact of my environment on my opportunities and ideas, but I'd still like to think about how real change that benefits real victims can be made, and how I might be a part of that. I'm not sure hating Zuckerberg provides that (at this point.)