They should have had subject matter experts asking the questions. Instead there were people had no idea what they were talking about, wasting time on shout-outs to their sons/nephews or whomever (I was only able to follow it for a minute).
The CEO needed to be under oath so that lying would carry consequences, and they needed someone who could cut through the BS of how some of the answers were worded.
We need more programmers, engineers, etc running for office.
The best part was someone asked if Facebook tracks you even if you've logged out of their website. Holy shit, moment of truth for Zuck, I thought. Nope, he deflected by saying he'll get his team to get back to the senator, and then he spewed jargon ("I know websites use cookies [bla bla] for security"). Oh, he knew the answer, but he couldn't say it in front of all the cameras watching. And of-effing-course he knows what cookies are.
And also he emphasized too much how people are in control of what data they share. The better question is, what data does Facebook save that the users can't see: all the analytics, all the location tracking, all the websites they visit. I didn't volunteer that data to you, Zuck, and I can't even control whether you have that data or not! (Well ok, on desktop I have Ghostery that blocks many many tracking pixels...).
If under Firefox I also recommend "Decentraleyes" as well. This one loads CDN resources locally instead, so google's overused jQuery CDN is not hit, but a local copy of jQuery is loaded instead. There's another one called "Don't touch my tabs! (rel=noopener)" which I also recommend. As well as using Firefox Containers and some of their plugins, including the one that isolates Facebook for you.
I actually see the cookies remark as a mis-step -- the politically correct answer was "my team will get back to you" but the engineer in him couldn't resist trying to "correct" the senator who was trying to portray Zuck as technically ignorant.
IIRC, Ghostery is a company that used to work with advertisers in the past (when it was owned by a company called Evidon). It also collects data from its users.
uBlock Origin is a low footprint (compared to other ad/tracker blockers) extension primarily maintained by one person who refuses to even take donations for it. Scroll down to the "About" section on the GitHub page [1] and see this Wiki page on donations [2], which at this point in time states:
> Why don't you accept donations?
> I don't want the administrative workload coming with donations. I don't want the project to become in need of funding in any way: no dedicated home page + no forum = no cost = no need for funding. I want to be free to move onto something else if ever I get tired working on these projects (no donations = no expectations).
> Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. This can't be emphasized enough.
Also see uBlock Origin's manifesto. [3]
For me, using uBlock Origin along with Privacy Badger [4] from EFF is a good combination.
But it would be more important for those engineers would also need to have a solid understanding of the law, which is a highly detailed and nuanced field. I think this isn't an implementable solution. Maybe you get a more-technically-knowledgable version of Ron Wyden who then sits on several subcommittees, but you're not going to get 10% of the Senate to be software engineers. After all, one could just as easily say that we need more senators who are nurses, petroleum engineers, hydrological engineers, pilots, soldiers, teachers, tax accountants, actuaries...
I think a better solution would be either:
1) When elected officials run for office, they explicitly state who their go-to advisor for internet and technology matters is. That way, they are not so reliant on the technical advice of lobbyists. The flaw in this is that now those advisors' opinions on unrelated matters are subject to scrutiny. I can easily imagine a scandal because it turns out that some senator's advisor said something dumb about abortion 5 years prior to an election. I'd like to say "well, don't judge the advisor on things unrelated to their area of expertise", but where do you draw that boundary? Is someone's opinion on domestic violence or prostitution really irrelevant to how they advise a senator on FOSTA?
2) The UK has been framing the House of Lords as a council of experts for a while now. I don't know how well it actually works as one though.
Doesn't the house of Lords have some members appointed by the church, others by birth, women weren't allowed to be Lords spiritual until 2015, and women still aren't allowed to inherit some seats today?
Hard to take that seriously in any regard, much less as 'experts'.
How would bishops not qualify as experts? To be sure I have no interest in the thing they're experts in, but I could say the same for performance art or make-up and presumably there are experts in those fields too.
You can't inherit any of the seats any more, you can inherit a title that means the other Lords could pick you for their chamber without anybody else sending you, this was supposed to be temporary but no other mechanism has ever been approved to replace it. But nobody automatically gets a seat, either they were sent there or they were chosen by the others.
The UK has been framing the House of Lords as a council of experts for a while now. I don't know how well it actually works as one though.
It's basically pot luck, unfortunately.
Sometimes the Lords have quite enlightened debates, where several contributors clearly do have expert knowledge in a field and others do respect that and politely defer to those with more relevant experience. Consequently, sometimes they really do send proposed laws back to the Commons with helpful amendments suggested.
However, sometimes they have no idea what they're talking about at all. It's not unusual to see a committee of Lords hearing evidence from high-ranking civil servants on some issue where the entire session looks like one old, rich, out-of-touch person after another declaring an interest due to their own business activities and all of them collectively missing the point for several hours.
It's not a universal truth, but I'm afraid discussions around science and technology subjects tend to fall into the latter category, other than perhaps on medical matters, where there does seem to be enough knowledge and expertise within the Lords to allow constructive and intelligent debate.
I think you're underestimating the many engineers out there who deal with contracts, and the laws regarding their profession.
> one could just as easily say that we need more senators who are nurses, petroleum engineers, hydrological engineers, pilots, soldiers, teachers, tax accountants, actuaries...
I agree! That's what my "etc" was for. I would love to see more everyday people run for office so our elected officials can be a better representation of the everyday people they're supposed to represent.
> The flaw in this is that now those advisors' opinions on unrelated matters are subject to scrutiny
Well, that and there's no reason to think that the candidate won't just reach into the lobbyist pool to pick their advisor.
Still, you're absolutely right that having lawmakers that are themselves technical experts is not super important, or likely. They always rely on staff, and that's fine. No one person can know everything about everything.
The CEO needed to be under oath so that lying would carry consequences, and they needed someone who could cut through the BS of how some of the answers were worded.
We need more programmers, engineers, etc running for office.