The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing Wednesday ostensibly about Facebook's cryptocurrency, Libra, but lawmakers weren't going to waste their chance to question Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on some Bitcoin knockoff. Here's how Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) made her pivot: "In order for us to make decisions about Libra, I think we need to kind of dig into your past behavior and Facebook's past behavior with respect to our democracy."
Ocasio-Cortez grilled Zuckerberg on the Cambridge Analytica election-data-manipulation scandal — Zuckerberg said he learned of the breach "around" March 2018, even though correspondence unearthed in a lawsuit this year showed executives knew about potential improper data harvesting as early as September 2015 — and then she turned to Facebook's "official policy" of allowing "politicians to pay to spread disinformation in 2020 elections and in the future. So I just want to know how far I can push this in the next year," she said.
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"Facebook doesn't need to run political ads; they're not a significant portion of its business," Vox notes. "But the company appears determined to leave its policy unchanged. So prepare for some your-Republican-congressman-supports-the-Green-New-Deal ads from Democrats in 2020. Maybe."
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