Facebook is a time vampire that doesn't offer you much beyond connecting with friends you likely wouldn't miss over time anyway.
Many questions focused on Cambridge Analytica, which gathered data several years ago through a personality quiz created by an academic researcher. The app vacuumed up not just the data of the people who took it, but also — thanks to Facebook's loose restrictions — data from their friends, too, including details that they hadn't intended to share publicly. Cambridge Analytica then obtained the data and was said to have used it to try to influence elections around the world.
Opponents of privacy legislation have long argued that the imposition of rules would keep technology companies from innovating. Yet as trust leaches out of the system, innovation is likely to suffer. If consumers fret about what smartphone apps may do with their data, fewer new offerings will take off—especially in artificial intelligence.
For Facebook to change in any meaningful way, Congress will have to change too. One of the most stunning revelations of the highly choreographed hearings was not anything Mr Zuckerberg said, but how little America’s politicians seemed to know about Facebook and the way the world of digital communications operates. There is little hope for smart regulation that will protect users’ privacy until the people who would draft laws understand the ecosystem they need to tame.