*By Alisha Haridasani and Jacqueline Corba*
European lawmakers aggressively questioned Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, indicating they may consider further restricting the social media company's unchecked growth and regulating its business practices.
Zuckerberg, meeting publicly with members of the European Parliament in Brussels, again apologized for the company's failure to protect the personal data of millions of Facebook users from a third-party app that shared their information with the British research firm Cambridge Analytica.
"We haven't done enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm," Zuckerberg said Tuesday, echoing the apology he offered Congress in testimony last month in Washington. "That was a mistake."
But European lawmakers were even more confrontational than their American counterparts, piling questions on Zuckerberg over Facebook's failure to combat fake news, thwart foreign interference in democratic elections, and limit the access of private data collected from its users.
"They asked very intelligent questions that were drawn from the hearings in the Senate and the House of Representatives, building on them in very interesting ways," said Adi Robertson, a senior reporter for The Verge.
A German member of the European Parliament asked pointedly about Facebook’s market share, and whether it should be subject to [antitrust regulations](https://www.c-span.org/video/?446000-1/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-testifies-eu-lawmakers), a common theme in Tuesday's questions.
“It is time to discuss breaking Facebook’s monopoly because it’s already too much power in only one hand?” said Manfred Weber, the head of the European Parliament’s majority party, the European People's Party.
Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgium leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, suggested the company should consider splitting up WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. “Could you or would you cooperate with the European antitrust authorities?” he asked Zuckerberg.
This line of questioning about Facebook's monopoly position was very "aggressive," said Roberson.
After all of the lawmakers asked their questions, Zuckerberg chose a few to answer at the end of the session, and he vowed to respond to the rest with written statements. With so many of their questions unanswered and no time remaining, the meeting bizarrely descended into back-and-forth bickering among lawmakers over the flawed format of the hearing.
"It seems like even people who were there on the floor were sort of baffled by the choice of panel," said Robertson.
Zuckerberg's questioning took place days before Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, goes into effect. The new law, one of the most sweeping privacy protection laws in the world, requires all companies to share how online user data is used and offer users the option to delete their data. Companies that fail to comply can be fined up to 4 percent of their global revenue.
Zuckerberg said Tuesday that Facebook would extend to users elsewhere in the world the same data privacy protections that European citizens will have under the new law.
“At the heart of Europe’s new data protection law, the GDPR, are three important principles: control, transparency, and accountability,” he said. “We’ve always shared these values.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/zuckerberg-testifies-to-european-parliament).
Markets closed the day mixed, and well off their lows of the day following a market meltdown earlier in the session. The Nasdaq staged a comeback late in the day, even amid ongoing worries about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Doug Flynn, certified financial planner and co-founder of Flynn Zito Capito, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss the markets' close and what's driving the major indexes.
Two companies recently announced a new partnership aimed at addressing the growing demand to borrow against crypto - digital assets capital markets firm CrossTower is partnering with commercial bank, BankProv. The companies are launching a crypto lending platform that will allow Bitcoin miners to receive loans to invest in crypto mining equipment. The companies say the program also addresses the difficulty of breaking into crypto mining due to the high cost. CrossTower research analyst Martin Gaspar joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Next-gen social sports platform Break the Love recently raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Break the Love's platform and iOS app allows users to discover and book group-based tennis activities, to either learn, train, or compete. The new company has already gotten support from a few big names in the world of tennis, including the coach of Naomi Osaka, as well as the United States Tennis Association and the brand Wilson. Break the Love founder and CEO Trisha Goyal joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
The world of NFTs and cannabis are colliding as luxury cannabis company Peakz gears up to launch a digital dispensary in the metaverse. CEO Jessie Grundy and Tiffany McBride, managing director of social equity ventures at The Parent Company, an investor in Peakz, joined Cheddar to break down exactly how a digital dispensary would work. Grundy also talked about offering low-cost NFT courses in an effort to help Oakland, California, residents not miss out on new investing opportunities, and McBride discussed why the tech-forward vision of Grundy was worth investing in for The Parent Company. "He comes with really fresh ideas that he's vetted, that he's experienced in, and I really believe the thinking along Jessie's lines is the future of cannabis," she said. "He's more than just flower and a story. He comes with concepts that are new that are innovative, and that is easy for us to get behind."
Daniel O'Brien, president and global head of enterprise at HTC America, joined Cheddar's "Closing Bell" to discuss new products and services the virtual reality brand showed off at CES 2022, including a wrist tracker — in lieu of controllers — for more accurate interactions connected to its all-in-one headset, the VIVE Focus 3. O'Brien also described a cloud-based, 5G content delivery system. "We partnered up with Lumen Technologies and from six miles away we delivered high bandwidth VR to a headset directly in the Wynn Hotel during CES," he said. "And people were able to walk around in their virtual experience through a wireless signal."
Samsung unveiled a slew of new electronics and upgraded designs at CES 2022. With a heavy focus on gaming and the future of work, the company showed off its all new Odyssey Ark, which boasts a massive 55 in. curved display designed to give users a more immersive and captivating experience. Sang Kim, SVP, Samsung Electronics joined Cheddar's Michelle Castillo to discuss the company's biggest launches as well as major trends to watch in 2022.
The UK's Information Commissioner's office is scrutinizing Facebook's parent company Meta over child safety practices linked to the Oculus headset, according to a report. The agency is looking to question the tech giant about how it's protecting children from harmful experiences in virtual reality.
