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Everything You Need to Know About Mark Zuckerberg’s Testimony to Congress

Facebook’s CEO and founder testified in front of House and Senate committees on data security and how the social media site is trying to improve.
Image: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

For around 10 hours over the past two days, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has perched on a booster-seat-like cushion and fielded questions from Congress.

Asked to testify about Facebook’s handling of private user data in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the 33-year-old calmly and carefully replied to Congress’s questions and attempted to explain how the internet works to more than one octogenarian.

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If you wisely decided not to binge watch the entire spectacle—or watch it in VR—fear not. Motherboard has been watching every second of the dialogue and has collected all the most interesting and important bits you may have missed. If you want to get caught up, this is where you should start.

Dive into our biggest takeaways from the hearing:

Zuckerberg said he notified campaigns about Russian meddling, then back pedaled that statement

Zuckerberg repeatedly claimed Facebook doesn’t sell data

Members of Congress kept asking the Zuck to build internet in their states

Zuckerberg’s estimate on how soon Facebook will be able to use AI to detect hate speech

The billionaire saying people don’t understand how Facebook uses their data because privacy policies are hard

After digesting all of that, you might want to move on to:

Checking if your data was affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Then, even if it is, get some context and remind yourself that it’s not your fault you handed Facebook so much juicy data.