As someone that is a strong supporter of Libra, even though it has not yet been launched, I decided to watch Mark Zuckerberg provide Congressional testimony on the matter. It was 5 hours long, and I wasn’t taking notes while watching – I was making spaghetti sauce – but I did snap a few screen shots and make mental notes.
Rather than summing it all up I broke it down the questioners into three sections – the good, the bad and the ugly…
The Good
No surprise, the Congressmen with some background within the technology and business field asked genuinely insightful questions related to the launch of Libra. Hearing them speak, I wished that they had more time to ask questions as it was clear that they were “in the know”.
Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing is, of course, one of the major issues as it relates to launching Libra. Both of these Congressman clearly recognized this and, to his credit, Mark Zuckerberg answered their questions well. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to know what I do about the birth of Bitcoin – as if he did and if he brought this up then and there – I think it would have radically changed how the proceedings went with these two.
The Bad
When I saw a few hours after the hearing a number of videos and memes making it appear as if Ocasio-Cortez had “pwned” Mark Zuckerberg I couldn’t help but laugh.
Her questions related to fact-checking of politicians speech were not insightful – she appears to be endorsing a patently anti-Constitutional stance – and the antagonistic tone added to the questions was rude. The way in which she closed trying to characterize Mark Zuckerberg as racist and Facebook as an enterprise supporting white supremacism was absurd and her inability to recognize that the Independent Fact Check Network is not within Facebook’s purview – althought they do contract with them – was sad.
The Ugly
When Mr. Green started to speak I thought for a moment that perhaps my video feed had switched to the same smooth jazz radio station I’d be forced to listen to after my mom would pick me up from late-night baseball practice, while the content of his comments made me think that I was witnessing a Critique session run by Bay Area Maoists.
I’m sure that this Congressman from Texas has a passionate base of supporters – and I’m also sure that they don’t support him for his subject area knowledge of anything related to the field of technology.