We need congresspeople to ask Zuckerberg better questions

This week was a big one for Facebook. The company’s stock hit an all-time high on Thursday after a great earnings report. Plus, it looks like the company’s biggest threat, TikTok is getting banned from the United States.

But that’s not all that happened. On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, and Google. This was an opportunity to get insight into some of the monopolistic practices of the world’s biggest companies. But some of the questions that were asked were incredibly stupid. The best example is probably Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner asking Zuckerberg why Donald Trump Jr. got banned from Twitter, a completely separate platform.

Right now, I just want to talk about one specific interaction that Mark Zuckerberg had with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington. Every congressperson on the committee had five minutes to question witnesses. In Jayapal’s five minutes she touched on some issues where Facebook often gets criticized. She also helped show why this five-minute format doesn’t really work.

Facebook copying Snapchat stories

Since I got back on social media a few weeks ago, I’ve been using the Instagram Stories feature quite a bit. If you haven’t used Instagram stories before, it’s a temporary photo or video that will be on your feed for 24-hours. It’s something that the company copied from Snapchat, which had the same feature years earlier.

While questioning Mark Zuckerberg, Congresswoman Jayapal specifically asked about these kinds of practices. She cited an email where Facebook’s Product Management Director said, “ I would love to be more agile and nimble when copying competitors.”

She then asked, “Has Facebook ever stopped competitors from getting footholds by copying competitors?”

On the surface, this seems like a good question. But it really doesn’t help get to the real issues.

The problem with this question

Copying good features from competitors is not a bad thing unless you’re stealing intellectual property. It’s just normal business practice. If a traditional car company like Ford sees that Tesla is doing great, they might decide to start making electric vehicles. That’s a smart move, not some kind of an evil act.

Besides, it’s not as if every feature that Facebook copies leads to the automatic death of rivals. Match Group, the owner of apps like Tinder and Hinge, seems to be doing great even after Facebook released Facebook Dating last year. The company has seen a steady rise in paid users and stock price has gone from $77 to $102. In fact, I don’t even know a single person that’s used Facebook Dating. That shows that features like Instagram Stories are only successful if they actually provide value for users.

But anyway, back to the questioning. After asking about Facebook copying competitors’ features, Congresswoman Jayapal then asked a follow-up question, “Since March of 2012… how many competitors did Facebook end up copying?”

This is a ridiculous question. I’m really not sure what answer was expected here. I really doubt that Mark Zuckerberg has an Excel spreadsheet that shows every feature Facebook has released that may have been partially inspired by a competitor.

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram

Congresswoman Jayapal went on to press Zuckerberg about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012. “Has Facebook ever threatened to clone the products of another company while also attempting to acquire that company?”

Zuckerberg denied that this had ever taken place. Congresswoman Jayapal then quoted a message that Zuckerberg sent to then- Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom. The message said, “Facebook is developing its own photo strategy, so how we engage now will determine how much we’re partners or competitors in the future.”

According to Jayapal, Instagram’s CEO took this as a threat that Facebook would try to destroy Instagram if he didn’t take Zuckerberg’s deal.

Look, I don’t think the Federal Trade Commission should have allowed Facebook to buy Instagram. It seems to have been a clear violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act, which prohibits anticompetitive mergers. I definitely think congresspeople have a right to ask questions about the acquisition. However, I once again have to say that this particular line of questioning didn’t really go anywhere.

While I can see how someone could read Zuckerberg’s message as a threat, it seems to be a 100% factual statement. If Instagram didn’t get acquired by Facebook, the two companies definitely would have competed with each other down the line. I really don’t see how this message by itself proves any bad intent on Zuckerberg’s part.

What should have been brought up

Congresswoman Jayapal did bring up a good point towards the end of her five minutes. She said “Facebook harvests and monetizes our data and then your company uses that data to spy on competitors.”

This was not something that she went into detail about, but I really wish she had. It would have great to hear questions about Facebook and Onavo Project. This was a free mobile app offered by Facebook that promised to encrypt user data. However, Facebook used data from Onavo Project to keep an eye on how often customers were using competing apps like Snapchat.

With this data, Facebook was able to see that user numbers for Snapchat were down when Instagram Stories was first released before anyone else outside of Snapchat knew about it. Unlike copying features from competitors, this is definitely not normal business practice.

That’s not the only thing that could have been brought up. In the past, Facebook has cut off access to the “Find Friends” feature for competing social media apps like Vine. That means that if you just got started with Vine, you would not be able to import contacts from Facebook, which made it harder for new users to get started. Meanwhile, Facebook gives this data access to companies that aren’t considered competitors like Amazon.

It would have been interesting to talk about this. If Congresswoman Jayapal had more time, she could have asked if Mark Zuckerberg would have shut off Instagram’s data access if the acquisition hadn’t gone through and whether he would consider that anti-competitive behavior. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

Why we should change the format of antitrust hearings

I’ve been going hard at Congresswoman Jayapal, but maybe this isn’t her fault. Maybe she would have been able to press Zuckerberg on things like the Onavo Project if she had more than five minutes to ask questions.

The fact is that the current format of these hearings doesn’t actually support any kind of in-depth discussion of these issues. It’s really hard to get beyond surface-level questions in five minutes. The best that Congresspeople can do is try their best to dunk on a CEO within the timeframe and hope that the video gets shared on social to help with their reelection campaign.

Now look, I didn’t write this article because I wanted to defend Mark Zuckerberg’s honor. I’m happy that he’s being dragged out in front of Congress. The amount of power that Facebook has globally is absolutely insane and should face some kind of scrutiny from the government.

I also don’t mean to single out Congresswoman Jayapal. These definitely weren’t the worst questions that got asked during the hearing and it seems like she was at least trying to uncover real issues with the time she had. I focused on this interaction specifically because it highlights how the current format really doesn’t allow us to explore these issues in any real detail.

If we’re going to regulate these companies effectively, we need to get to the root of the problem. That starts with asking the right questions.

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Originally published at https://sundayspecial.substack.com.