1) We require food manufacturers to list on the side of their products the ingredients, as well as the nutrition facts so people can make an informed decision about what they are putting in their body.

There is a growing pressure to require your companies to do something similar, and publish the algorithms and metrics you use to keep people on your services longer.

Would you support this movement?

2) Do you believe your products are addictive (this was already asked. I hope it gets asked more.)

3) What does it mean to you for something to be true? Could you give an example of something that you find to be uncontroversially true?

I’m not a big fan of the last question. It seems like it’s hinting at the line of argument (which is very popular on HN) that goes something like “you can’t provide a formal specification for what it means for something to be “true,” and you cannot determine “truth” with 100% reliability, therefore you should have no processes or policies which involve any determination whatsoever about the state of the world.”

> There is a growing pressure to require your companies to do something similar, and publish the algorithms and metrics you use to keep people on your services longer.

Growing pressure from who? I've occasionally seen these suggestions within niche tech communities, but I've never heard a layperson suggest something remotely similar to this. I'm also unsure how useful it would be. How detailed would such disclosures be? Even if they list "We use this machine learning algorithm", that algorithm description seems like it would be largely meaningless without the training data (which I don't think you could convince them to publish at all).

> Do you believe your products are addictive?

What company CEO _wouldn't_ say yes to this? It feels, to me at least, like a fluff question that you already know the answer to and won't yield any interesting insight into the company or how the CEO thinks about the product.

> What does it mean to you for something to be true? Could you give an example of something that you find to be uncontroversially true?

I think this is a much better question, although I worry that it might yield itself to some "gotcha" moments from Senators. For example, if one of the CEOs were to say "The sky is blue", I think you might get a lot of Senators saying "Well what if it's raining". That might not be the best example, but just something off the top of my head.

I agree that it might be hard to come up with a unequivocal definition of what is and is not true, as that's ultimately a complicated philosophical question, but I think we can approximate truth by relying on a variety of sources who we know will do their due-diligence on research and are examining the full context of issues.

Not to be a naysayer, but when you get into legal terms, you have to be careful with terms like "addictive". Addictive implies a component of physicality (by the legal/medical definition, not the common definition). It's horribly habitual, which is as bad as, and hard to differentiate except in the physical symptomology of withdrawal.

I know this sounds like splitting hairs on message boards, but I can guarantee you that all of these people who have been called to testify have been briefed heavily by squads of lawyers.

These are actually good questions.

There might be even more good questions; possibility too many.

What's the best way to crowdsource such good questions and select a good sample and bring it to the attention of whoever organizes such hearings?

Write your senator. All questions come from somewhere.

But then you don't inspire other people to come up with better questions if the question is only known to the senator ('s team) until eventually revealed to the public once asked.

These CEOs seems really skilled at using a lot of words to say and commit to very little and it seems like all these questions could be pretty easily dodged.

I bet they've had training on this. If you watch Zuck's earlier interviews, he really squirms.

Mark's way worse than Jack is IMO. Jack's go-to is to say they made a mistake last time and they'll try to do better, which is kind of a dodge but at least he gives up a bit of ground.

Mark never admits a single failing and remarks on how "meaningful" your interaction with his service is.

Like yeah - smoking crack is pretty meaningful when you're a crack addict.

The answer to number 1 is an easy "no" because trade secrets are crucial to just about every industrial sector and an algorithm is clearly a trade secret. Even the food industry allows trade secrets -- the secret Coca-Cola recipe is not printed on every can. Even the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have proprietary stabilizing agents in them. As much as it sounds nice, the outcome would be vagueries like "we use algorithms to select the content we think you'll find most interesting based on your past browsing behavior".

The only practical way to do 1) is to publish all source code related to this, right?

Live, after each merge/release.

This is an interesting question! I'm not sure there is anything I need to hear from these two. That's not to say that polarization and disinformation being amplified due to social media bubbles isn't a serious problem. Rather, I don't think it's up to these two to fix it, nor even understand it.

As a society we need to first understand the problem, then decide on what, if anything, we want to do to fix it. Fixes would most likely take the form of some sort of regulation.

E.g. something like where in Canada, some percentage of media has to be from a Canadian source. That law is very contentious in Canada, but you could imagine a similar law for any system that does content recommendation. E.g. some percentage of the content has to be sampled from the total body of content, and not come from the recommender. Something like this might address polarization, but disinformation is a thornier problem.

In any case, it needs to start first with understanding what is going wrong. Things like Mozilla's media bubble study is a good start. From that we need to form policy. There is no role for CEO opinions in all of this.

Some things are simply too destructive to be in society. I'll take smoking as an example: Of course you should have the option to put whatever you like into your body. But when it starts to seriously affect your health and the people around you, it calls into question whether your right to smoke is above the negative impact on society.

This is how I see social media. (I realise a lot of HN folk work in this area)

These CEOs brought social media into our world, and I expect them to take resposibility for it. If they are unwilling or unable to take responsibility, then I'm OK for The State to do that for them - like you said with regulations. Currently it looks like they don't want to take resposibility for the destruction they have caused.

Sorry for the rant - but I'm seeing first hand the negative effects of QAnon/Consipracy Theories/Extreme Politics within family members.

I've recently conceded to the argument that it's impossible to solve the problem without first defining the role and function of the companies. I believe that should be at the center of Senate questioning, not because it's comfortable, but because it is necessary.

I cooked eggs this morning. There is a diversity of wonderful eggs and even some bad eggs. Is the Twitter service a) the eggs, b) the pan, c) the stove, or d) the hen-to-table service of providing a delicious breakfast?

Obviously they would be 3 good faith questions that must be answered only with the word "yes" or "no", with any other response resulting in being immediately charged with Contempt of Congress.

1. Do you, personally, visualize? Meaning, do you form internal imagery in your mind of which you are consciously aware of "seeing"?

2. Is that limited to historic memories, such of people, or does it extend to the irrational, where you can see things that aren't real or don't exist yet? I suppose this could also include audio manifestations.

3. Are you aware of any means available which would completely halt all corporate and service functions of the entity you helped create and unleash on the world?

I suppose the last one is a bit of a leading question, but given the seriousness of their actions, meh.

1. Would you agree to fund an editorially-independent news organization (or partner with same), producing 1 hour of content-equivalent a night, with proceeds from your businesses?

2. What would you suggest the US Government do to help your company support free speech around the world, including in countries where it's limited?

3. Many of the negative effects of your platforms have been blamed on private ranking and/or broadcasting algorithms. What kind of transparency will you commit to with regards to these algorithms?

How many people are required to moderate a 3 billion member network? How do you decide the number? How many do you currently employ city/state/country wise.

Since the engagement algos/infinite scroll/like button/follower counts etc are meddling with the brains reward mechanisms, what determines such meddling is psychologically safe?

What'd be the point? Both of these are sociopaths, they're fully aware of what they're doing, what the effects are and they simply do not care.

I don't think it's helpful to pretend to have a full view into the minds of these men. I think it's very possible that Zuckerberg genuinely has no idea why people would care this much about privacy and why people push back against Facebook because of it, just like I think there are people who actually have no idea why the phrase "if you have nothing to fear then you have nothing to hide" is problematic.

He's pretty careful with his own privacy so I think he does understand - it might be more accurate to say he thinks the majority of us don't deserve it.

> What'd be the point? Both of these are sociopaths

Hearings have four audiences in decreasing order of importance: voters, regulators, the hearing participants and legislators.

If you believe these men are irredeemable sociopaths, ask questions that show voters and regulators (e.g. prosecutors) that.