Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked Mark Zuckerberg how big a lie she could buy on Facebook

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — (Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Guardian)

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.

Zuckerberg said Ocasio-Cortez couldn't buy an add targeting black voters with the wrong election date, but when she asked if she could "run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries, saying that they voted for the Green New Deal," Zuckerberg said yes, probably. "Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact-checking on political advertisements?" Ocasio-Cortez asked, and Zuckerberg said he thinks "lying is bad, and I think if you were to run an ad that had a lie in it, that would be bad," and voters should know if she or any other politician is a liar.

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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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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.