Mark Zuckerberg survived 5 hours of relentless questioning from Congress — here's what you need to know (FB)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the US Senate in a grueling five-hour session on Tuesday.
Zuckerberg's delivery was wooden and stuck closely to company talking points — but didn't make any major mistakes.
Many of the senators were painfully tech illiterate, and the 33-year-old exec found himself explaining basic features of Facebook.
His answers to some of the tougher questions were less satisfying, but he was never pushed as hard as he could have been.

Mark Zuckerberg didn't really screw up. This time, at least.

On Tuesday, the Facebook CEO testified in front of a rare US Senate joint committee hearing. The subject: Facebook's mounting scandals, including the misappropriation of up to 87 million users' profile data by Cambridge Analytica and Russia's use of the platform to spread propaganda and misinformation.

The stakes were high, and a major misstep had the potential to be played ad nauseam across cable news and define Zuckerberg's — and Facebook's — public image for years. (Recall when, in a notorious 2010 onstage interview, the executive grew so flustered and sweaty he had to take his hoodie off.)

The 33-year-old CEO is not a natural public speaker, and he stuck closely to talking points with a somewhat robotic delivery. Facebook's new, broader view of its responsibilities was constantly mentioned, while his frequent references to starting Facebook in his dorm room even drew jokes from some senators.

But he managed to basically stay on message throughout the five-hour hearing. Facebook is very sorry, it made a "big mistake," it's proactively making significant changes to prevent this from happening again, and so on. His remarks closely echoed what he and other executives had repeated in numerous blog posts and press interviews over the past week or so — and shows how Facebook has managed to largely stay ahead of lawmakers' questions.

Attempts by high-profile Republican senators like Ted Cruz to highlight perceived left-wing bias at the company failed to elicit a damaging reaction from Zuckerberg. And the tech illiteracy of many senators was on painful display, with Zuckerberg repeatedly having to explain basic concepts and features of Facebook — he explained at least three times, for example, that Facebook doesn't sell user data.

When it came to harder questions from more tech-literate senators — who asked questions about trust, potential violations of a regulator's order, and conversations inside the company — Zuckerberg's answers were less satisfying. But with each senator allowed only five minutes, he was never pushed as far as he could have been.

The embattled executive isn't out of the hot seat just yet. On Wednesday, he will appear again before Congress, this time in front of a House committee. That hearing that could easily run as long as Tuesday's affair, if not longer.

Here's the key news from Tuesday's Senate hearing:

Facebook employees have
Facebook was
Facebook has
Zuckerberg acknowledged that most users don't read the social network's terms of service before signing up.
Facebook does not have "specific knowledge" of Russia or China scraping data and building profiles on users
Zuckerberg got
Zuckerberg

For more on the Senate hearing, check out Business Insider's live blog of the event »

Mark Zuckerberg survived 5 hours of relentless questioning from Congress — here's what you need to know (FB)

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