[mathinpens]

did you actually read or watch the whole testimony (of either testimony) or you basing this on ~5 minutes of youtube click bait footage of older senators being confused...

I watched the entire zuckerberg united states senate testimony and I found much of the questioning incisive and valuable

[Gys]

I admit I only read some articles on both encounters (in reputable newspapers). However, those are very much in line with my personal experiences from the years that was running a media company. Politicians are focussed on getting in office and staying there. Being friends with (listing to) the big guys (big names, important companies) is cool and good for status. Mingling with the little guys is only neccessary every so many years (because, what do they know anyway ?). Yes, it made me a little frustrated ;-)

[lakechfoma]

I watched a couple of hours of it myself and saw moments like the "senator, we run ads" moment happen. A lot of the things the media was running off about was taken well out of context. That moment, for example, was not nearly as "oh my god look at this old fart" as Twitter made it. They had already established the fact that FB makes money off ads and the senator was basically poking to see if there was any thought towards another way to make money.

Honestly a fair number of quality questions were asked and deflected by Zuck, and he knew how to play some moments to make the senators look stupid for those social media soundbites. But to be fair, an alarming number of questions were also either very poorly formed (intention was there, a millennial proofread would have helped though) or were thinly veiled self indulgent political maneuvers. Zuck actually did a good job defending net neutrality at one point where the line of questioning was obviously a nod to the ISP cabal.