CEP Executive Director David Ibsen writes: “The EU and U.S. Congress deserve enormous credit for convincing the CEO of the most widely used social media site in the world to answer questions in the hopes of improving public safety and security. But granting too much deference and limiting each questioner to several minutes made it too easy for Mr. Zuckerberg to rely on his highly-polished spin to deflect unwanted questions and prevent a thorough airing of issues like Facebook’s troubled business model and its insufficient efforts to crack down on the misuse of its platform. The focus of policymakers during future hearings must change if Facebook and the tech industry is ever to be transparent and accountable to the public. To achieve effective oversight of the tech industry, U.S. and EU representatives — who are charged with protecting public safety — need not become the equivalent of Silicon Valley engineers. Rather, they must use their foundational knowledge of industry-generated problems to help focus on the key questions and pursue them exhaustively with tech representatives until there is a clear response.”