9 key moments from Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill

Kicking off the day: An army of fake Zuckerbergs on the Capitol Lawn.

Advocacy group Avaaz placed 100 life-sized cutouts of Zuckerberg wearing a “Fix Fakebook” T-shirt.

The group wants Facebook to “ban all bots, alert the public any and every time users see fake or disinformation, fund fact checkers around the world, and submit to an independent audit to review the scale and scope of fake news.”

The chair: Images of Zuckerberg’s chair, with an extra cushion on the seat for the 5-foot-7-inch CEO, rocketed around Twitter.

“We’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

Zuckerberg opened his testimony with an admission that he’s responsible for everything that happens on the Facebook platform.

“For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can do,” he said. “It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.”

Can’t say how many third-party apps have improperly accessed users’ information.

Asked how many times there was a third-party app that needed to delete user data that was improperly transferred, Zuckerberg was unsure.

He said if any apps are found to be “suspicious,” Facebook will audit them and decide if they are doing anything “improper” that would cause them to be banned from the platform.

“Going forward, we’re going to take a more proactive position on this and do much more regular spot checks and other reviews of apps as well as increasing the amount of audits we do,” Zuckerberg said.

Using AI to root out hate speech.

Zuckerberg says he believes artificial intelligence to police hate speech will be ready in the next 10 years.

Facebook has developed and deployed AI tools to find terrorist propaganda, Zuckerberg said, and nearly all ISIS and al Qaeda content that is removed from Facebook is flagged before “any human sees it.”

“That’s a success in terms of rolling out AI tools that can proactively police and enforce safety across the community,” he said. “Hate speech, I am optimistic that over a five- to 10-year period, we’ll have AI tools that can get into some of the nuances, the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging things for our systems, but today is just not there on that.”

Mueller bombshell.

Zuckerberg confirmed Facebook is working with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as part of the Russia investigation.

Asked if Facebook employees have been interviewed by Mueller’s office, Zuckerberg replied: “I want to be careful here, because our work with the special counsel is confidential and I want to make sure that in an open session I’m not revealing something that’s confidential.”

When asked whether Facebook has been subpoenaed by Mueller’s team, Zuckerberg initially said yes, but walked back his response. “Actually, let me clarify that. I’m actually am not aware of a subpoena. I believe that there may be, but I know that we’re working with them,” he said.

Durbin’s hotel question.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked Zuckerberg, “Would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” Zuckerberg was visibly thrown off before replying, “Um — no.”

Zuckerberg similarly didn’t want to reveal the names of those he messages with.

“I think that may be what this is all about. Your right to privacy — the limits of your right to privacy, and how much you give away in modern America in the name of, quote, connecting people around the world,” Durbin said.

Bias against conservatives

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pressed Zuckerberg on Facebook’s perceived bias against conservatives, citing the suppression of “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” and Trump supporters Diamond and Silk.

“I understand where that concern is coming from, because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place,” Zuckerberg said. “This is actually a concern that I have and that I try to root out in the company, is making sure that we don’t have any bias in the work that we do, and I think it is a fair concern that people would wonder about.”

“Your user agreement sucks.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who was one of the key senators to watch during the hearing, said it bluntly: “Your user agreement sucks … the purpose of that user agreement is to cover Facebook’s rear end. It’s not to inform your users about their rights. Now, you know that, and I know that.”

Kelly Cohen, James Langford, and Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.