Capitol Lawn Flooded With an Army of Mark Zuckerberg Cutouts Before His Senate Testimony
More than 100 life-sized cutouts of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have flooded the Capitol lawn ahead of his congressional testimony starting Tuesday afternoon. The protest was set up by Avaaz — an advocacy group speaking out against the spread of fake news on the social media platform. Each of the cutouts is wearing a ‘Fix Facebook’ t-shirt.
“The event intends to call attention to the hundreds of millions of fake accounts still spreading disinformation on Facebook,” Avaaz said in a statement issued before the protest. “The group is calling on the CEO 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.”
#LifeCouldBeEasierIf we had functioning democracies and fair elections that weren’t corrupted by #FakeNews! https://t.co/tfxcGnexGi #FixFacebook pic.twitter.com/Ml9BuDatho
— Avaaz (@Avaaz) April 10, 2018
Zuckerberg will meet with the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning, he will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He’s expected to acknowledge his company’s fault for allowing the private information of users to be accessed by big data firm Cambridge Analytica. It is estimated that more than 87 million profiles were compromised.
Zuckerberg will also discuss Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including disinformation and fake accounts.
Regarding the future of Facebook, Zuckerberg stated in a copy of his planned testimony, “It will take some time to work through all of the changes we need to make, but I’m committed to getting it right.”
[Image provided by Avaaz]
