During a day in Washington, Facebook's boss met with Donald Trump and rejected the idea of splitting his business to address concerns over the Californian giant's weight.
Facebook's founding boss, Mark Zuckerberg, in Washington, DC, on Thursday [September 19th], was punctuated by private meetings with elected officials and a White House interview with Donald Trump, the president of the United States.
"Good meeting with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in the Oval Office today", simply tweeted Donald Trump, accompanying his message with a photo where we see the two men shake hands. He did not provide more details on the content of their discussions.
In the US Congress, Mark Zuckerberg spoke in camera with Republican Senator Josh Hawley, one of the most outspoken critics of Facebook. "We had a frank conversation", tweeted the senator.
"I challenged him to do two things to show that Facebook is serious about the issues of impartiality, protection of personal data and competition :
"1] Sell WhatsApp and Instagram;
2] Submit yourself to an independent, external audit on the question of censorship."
He answered no to both. "
Senator Hawley had already pursued the network of his wrath when he was Attorney General of Missouri.
A law to protect personal data
On Wednesday night, Zuckerberg met privately with other elected officials at a lively dinner party, Democrat Senator Mark Warner said. "We have a long way to go, but I appreciate his sincerity and the fact that he has taken our concerns seriously. I hope we can work together to meet these challenges "he tweeted.
If he wants a stricter regulation, Mr. Warner said he was not, for now, in favor of dismantling the giant Facebook. "I still do not join some of my friends who want to go straight to breaking [the group] ", he said on Fox Business Network.
The young tech mogul and the elected officials evoked "Many subjects"according to Warner, including the protection of personal data, transparency, racist content, ways to better authenticate identities or cryptocurrencies. The Congress is working on legislation that better protects privacy against Internet giants, for whom personal data is often the main source of income.
At the end of July, the US federal authorities imposed on Facebook, which they accused of having " deceived " its users, an independent control of the way it processes personal data, in addition to a record fine of five billion dollars.
