It was an answer to a question that wasn't asked. The senator was asking whether facebook owns that data it has about a person, and the answer was that you own what you post. Those are very different sets. A follow up to answer whether facebook believes it owns the data it's accumulated about you would've been great.

The lack of strong followup questions is the best indicator that there is very little about this hearing that is spontaneous and not defined in advance.

As I write this, Ms Cantwell starts her questioning and it is a markedly different style. Interesting

How could Zuckerberg know less than Wikipedia about Palantir considering Thiel's involvement with both FB and Palantir? He seems to merely know of the existence of Palantir.

To be fair, Wikipedia knows a lot more than me, too.

> there is very little about this hearing that is spontaneous

but, isn't that pretty much always true about Congressional hearings?

it seems like they're just a platform for Senators and Congressional reps to get some high profile air time and maybe enhance their reputation amongst their voters.

and maybe, if they're lucky, some YouTuber will excerpt their "performance" and title it "Watch Senator XYZ DESTROY Mark Zuckerberg!!!"

> The senator was asking whether facebook owns that data it has about a person, and the answer was that you own what you post. Those are very different sets.

It answers by exception; specifically, the answer is “Yes, except for information consisting of content posted by that user or other users, which is owned by the user who posted it.” I don't think the answer was at all unclear.

It's obviously couches in a way which directs the attention of the inattentive to the most user friendly component of that answer because it's the only explicit part, but minimizing the PR fallout is literally Zuckerberg’s job, so expecting him not to anything less than the maximum he can in that regard without lying to Congress is expecting nonfeasance on his part.

Yes and the congressman totally let the line of questioning go on that response. The problem seems to be that (1) many of the congressman are just too unfamiliar to pry at Zuck's bad answers and (2) 5 minutes just isn't long enough to build up a damning line of questions.

Isn't this a two day hearing? Maybe they can consult with their aides who actually understand this and pick at the bad answers tomorrow.

Users might own the content, but they grant FB a perpetual license to that content.

I mean, they have to. HN has a perpetual license to our comments because otherwise they couldn't host them.

Unsaid: The content about you that you didn't post, belongs to us, however.

Alternative, fully correct logical perspective that you might have subtly missed:

"Nobody forces you to post drunken racist rants on your wall or dickpics on Instagram. You control and own the content you post on Facebook."