Mark Zuckerberg has spent an awful lot of time in the hot seat over the last two days. For those of us who have been paying attention to Facebook and its litany of scandals over the past few months, Zuck’s testimony in front of committees from the Senate and a (distinctly more lucid) one from the House told us nothing new. In fact, certain instances made it seem far more like a tortured five hour call with IT. But why does a picture of my 88-year-old dad show up on my own profile? Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? 
 
 Yes, many of the illustrious senators and representatives assembled devoted their limited minutes with the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the United States to addressing some very simple elements of how Facebook works (which is lucky for Zuckerberg because he had to concentrate most of his energy on modulating his face in the very natural way that humans do). 
 
 “Yesterday when we talked, I gave the relatively harmless example that I’m communicating with my friends on Facebook and indicate that I love a certain kind of chocolate. And all of a sudden I start receiving advertisements for chocolate. What if I don’t want to receive those commercial advertisements?” 
 
 — Senator Nelson (D-FL) “There is a core misunderstanding about how that system works, which is that—let’s say if you are a shop and you are selling muffins, right, you might want to target people in a specific town who might be interested in baking or some demographic, but we don’t send that information to you, we just show the message to the right people and that’s a really important, I think, common misunderstanding of how the system works.” 
 
 — Mark Zuckerberg 
 
 It’s not much of a stretch to say they probably aren’t equipped to decide how Facebook treats it’s user’s privacy. How could legislators hold Zuckerberg accountable if they don’t understand what’s going on? 
 
 Congress is responsible for regulating a lot of industries that have a lot of technical nuance. Arguably, many of those products, from medicine to fuel, potentially put more Americans at greater risk than Facebook does. 
 
 But clearly, their technical expertise leaves much to be desired, that we can’t take their digital literacy for granted (that’s why they have advisors who, one would hope, know a bit more). Congress wants to get it right, even if they don’t totally understand. Because they may have little comprehension of how Facebook and its competitors (if they can name a few) work, but they have a firm grasp of the effects. Senators and representatives know that Facebook directly affects a huge proportion of their constituents who were shocked — SHOCKED — by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They may even be aware that their own re-election could be on the line, potentially from foreign interference. 
 
 Congress’ ignorance might be at least a bit due to the fact that legislators haven’t yet done much to regulate the tech industry. 
 
 These hearings show that our grandpa-congressmen don’t know all that much about the internet. But they also show that age of tech companies doing as they please may be ending. 
 
 “I think it’s time to ask if Facebook has moved too fast and broken too many things,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) stated at the beginning of this morning’s hearing. 
 
 We know what kind of regulation we need. The European Union has set a great example with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation: every internet user has the right to know when their data changes hands or is subject to a breach, and has the right to be forgotten. Why doesn’t the government start there, and implement similar rules in the U.S.? 
 
 If the people that represent us really want to hold Zuckerberg and Facebook accountable, we should be able to call his bluff. That requires being just as well-informed as he is. And if he’s hiding information from us, they’ve gotta know that, too, and legally require him to turn it over. 
 
 To get there, many Congressmen and Congresswomen have some studying to do. We need to value digital literacy in the people we elect. That is, if we don’t want to have another Cambridge Analytica on our hands. ||||| Getty Images 
 
 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg started his testimony Tuesday in Washington looking worried. But he walked away from his first day of congressional hearings looking pretty confident. 
 
 That's because many of the questions came from tech-challenged senators who seemed clueless about how Facebook makes its money and how the internet works. 
 
 "If [a version of Facebook will always be free], how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?" Sen. Orrin Hatch, the 84-year-old Republican from Utah, asked early on in the five-hour hearing. 
 
 Zuckerberg paused a moment before saying, "Senator, we run ads." He, and his staff sitting behind him, then grinned before Hatch moved onto this next question. 
 
 Now playing: Watch this: Zuckerberg explains the internet to Congress 
 
 Team Facebook looked pleased because Hatch's question, like those from many of the senator's peers, showed a lack of basic understanding about how Facebook operates. The world's largest social network, which currently is free for all users, generated nearly $13 billion in revenue during the last three months of 2017. That money came from ads directed at the site's 2.2 billion users, with the ads targeted based on what Facebook knows about you. 
 
 Facebook is a large, often secretive company that many in tech -- not to mention regular consumers -- have difficulty understanding. But Congress has toyed with the idea of regulating Facebook and other social media networks. If it doesn't understand how they actually work, it may be harder for Congress to develop laws that adequately protect consumers and prevent something like the Cambridge Analytica scandal from happening again. 
 
 "A lot of these members frankly aren't on social media and maybe don't have experience with social media," said James Norton, a former deputy assistant undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. "You need to experience the platform to understand what you're talking about if you do want to challenge the validity of what the company's doing."' 
 
 Facebook's shares jumped 4.5 percent to $165.04 during the testimony, their highest point since March 21 (the week after the Cambridge Analytica news broke). 
 
 Many on Twitter agreed that Zuckerberg didn't quite get the tough grilling that was expected. (At one point well into the proceedings, Zuckerberg himself told the Senate committee he wasn't ready for a break and asked to keep going.) Instead of Twitter being outraged over Zuckerberg's statements, many lamented how little US legislators seemed to understand. 
 
 “Mr. Zuckerberg, a magazine i recently opened came with a floppy disk offering me 30 free hours of something called America On-Line. Is that the same as Facebook?” pic.twitter.com/U7pqpUhEhQ — Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) April 10, 2018 
 
 senator: my aides have given me this complex multi-part question to read to you in a halting and uncertain voice 
 
 zuckerberg: oh no don't worry about that, our new motto is 'we fixed it' 
 
 senator: that sounds wrong but i don't know what to ask — Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) April 10, 2018 
 
 Facebook stock up 4.5% on news that America is run by people who still own VCRs pic.twitter.com/whQd2hGKMN — Tom Gara (@tomgara) April 10, 2018 
 
 Mark Zuckerberg goes to Washington 
 
 Zuckerberg took the hot seat Tuesday -- and will testify again Wednesday -- to account for data privacy lapses at the company he started 14 years ago in his Harvard dorm room. 
 
 In 2013, personal info from about 300,000 users was originally collected for a personality quiz app called This is Your Digital Life, designed by Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge University researcher. Because of how Facebook worked at the time, Kogan was able to collect data from the quiz takers' friends -- up to 87 million of them -- and share the information with Cambridge Analytica. The UK-based data analytics firm then may have used the data to help the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. 
 
 Congress wants answers about how that happened and what Facebook is doing to prevent something like the scandal from happening again. But that doesn't mean they entirely understand the questions they're asking -- or even the answers they're getting from Zuckerberg. 
 
 "Listening to these senators ask these questions is very frustrating, because they don't understand the technology, and they don't understand how Facebook really works," said Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin. "They don't even understand how the advertising industry works." 
 
 Now playing: Watch this: Seven of our favorite moments from Zuck's congressional... 
 
 Part of the problem simply may be age. Most of Facebook's users are younger than America's senators. The average age of the 100 US senators is 63, according to congressional database LegiStorm. Zuckerberg is 33. As of January, only 21 percent of Facebook's US users were 55 or older, according to Statista. Nearly half were younger than 35 years old. When Facebook got started for college students in 2004, those senators weren't the target audience. 
 
 Still, a Wall Street Journal analysis found that many of the Senate's older members post on Facebook as much as their younger peers. For instance, Sen. Ed Markey, a 71-year-old Democrat from Massachusetts, published 628 posts over the past year, the Journal reported. That's nearly as many as Sen. Cory Booker, the 48-year-old Democrat from New Jersey. 
 
 Repetition and confusion 
 
 On Tuesday, many senators started with carefully crafted questions but then were unable to offer logical followups. A few asked the same questions as their predecessors, including whether users actually understand the terms of service for the site and what information Facebook distributes to advertisers. 
 
 "Have you ever drawn the line on selling data to an advertiser?" asked Dean Heller, a Republican from Nevada, after Zuckerberg earlier noted that Facebook doesn't sell data to advertisers. (FYI, Facebook places ads in users' feeds based on who the advertiser is targeting.) 
 
 Sen. Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, confused Zuckerberg with her line of questions, asking "how many data categories" Facebook stores. 
 
 "How many data categories do you store, does Facebook store, on the categories that you collect?" Deb Fischer, a Republican senator from Nebraska 
 
 "How many data categories do you store, does Facebook store, on the categories that you collect?" she asked. "How much? All of it? Everything we click on? Is that in storage somewhere?" 
 
 Zuckerberg said Facebook does store data but used Fischer's lack of knowledge to avoid really answering the question. 
 
 Fischer later remarked that "we all know" that Facebook's user size -- 2.2 billion -- is "larger than the population of most countries." No countries have that many citizens. China and India are both estimated to have about 1.4 billion people apiece. The US has a population of about 326 million. 
 
 Then there was confusion about how Facebook differs from other social networks. 
 
 "Is Twitter the same as what you do?" asked Lindsey Graham, a Republican representing South Carolina. He also asked Zuckerberg which companies could essentially replace Facebook in people's lives. 
 
 "Is Twitter the same as what you do?" Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina 
 
 "Let me put it this way," Graham said. "If I buy a Ford, and it doesn't work well, and I don't like it, I can buy a Chevy. If I'm upset with Facebook, what's the equivalent product that I can go sign up for?" 
 
 And then there was confusion about technology in general. 
 
 "From the moment that we wake up in the morning, until we go to bed, we're on those handheld tablets," Bill Nelson, a Democratic senator from Florida, said during his opening remarks. We think he meant "smartphones." (Nearly everyone in the US who wants a smartphone has one, but only roughly half of Americans own a tablet, according to Pew.) 
 
 Pipes? 
 
 Others couldn't follow what Zuckerberg was saying. Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, seemed to have gotten lost during Zuckerberg's explanation of how internet service providers (which Facebook's CEO called the the "pipes" of the internet) are different from platform providers like Facebook. 
 
 "When you -- when you say 'pipes,' you mean…" Wicker asked. Zuckerberg said he meant ISPs. 
 
 "When you -- when you say 'pipes,' you mean…" Roger Wicker, a Republican senator from Mississippi 
 
 And there was Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, who veered off the hearing's topic -- user data and privacy -- and spent his time accusing Facebook of being biased against conservatives. 
 
 "Do you consider yourself a neutral public forum, or are you engaged in political speech, which is your right under the First Amendment?" Cruz asked several times before listing examples of conservative pages Facebook has blocked. He also asked why Facebook fired Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus VR business who funded a secret anti-Hillary Clinton campaign. 
 
 Zuckerberg called Luckey's departure a "personnel issue" that would be "inappropriate" to address, but he added that it wasn't because of Luckey's politics. The Guardian reported in 2015 that Cruz used Cambridge Analytica data to help his presidential campaign. 
 
 Even senators known as the more tech savvy of the bunch experienced hiccups. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, asked if Facebook could track what one user emails another on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is the encrypted messaging service -- which doesn't use email -- that Facebook bought in 2014. 
 
 "Let's say I'm emailing about 'Black Panther' within WhatsApp ... do I get a 'Black Panther banner ad?" Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii 
 
 He also asked Zuckerberg several times if messages sent on WhatsApp can be used to target ads. "Is there some algorithm that spits out some information to your ad platform, and then let's say I'm emailing about 'Black Panther' within WhatsApp, do I get a WhatsApp -- do I get a 'Black Panther' banner ad?" Schatz asked. 
 
 Each time, Zuckerberg responded that WhatsApp messages are fully encrypted, which means they can't be read by Facebook or used for ad targeting. 
 
 "The more [that] the questions [Zuckerberg] got were either repetitive -- or in some cases were irrelevant -- I found him to be becoming even bolder and more energized by what was going on," Bajarin said. 
 
 Tune in again Wednesday for more coverage from Zuckerberg's hearings in Washington. 
 
 CNET's Abrar Al-Heeti contributed to this report. 
 
 Cambridge Analytica: Everything you need to know about Facebook's data mining scandal. 
 
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– Now that Mark Zuckerberg has finished two days of testimony on Capitol Hill, one clear theme is emerging in coverage after the fact: Members of Congress, particularly senators in their 70s and 80s, seem to lack a fundamental understanding of how the company works. That should "give everyone serious pause if they think that federal legislation is going to solve the serious and growing issues of technology run amok," writes Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post. "Legislators don’t seem to understand it well enough to even ask the right questions, much less fix the problem." Sullivan and Shara Tibken of CNET both point to one question in particular by 84-year-old Sen. Orrin Hatch as a prime example. "If [a version of Facebook will always be free], how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?" asked Hatch. It took Zuckerberg only four words to explain this basic tenet of Facebook's business plan: "Senator, we run ads." Tibken notes that Zuckerberg and staffers behind him grinned at the response. Other lawmakers seemed similarly flummoxed by other aspects of not just Facebook but tech in general. At Futurism, Victor Tangermann writes that it's clear that "many Congressmen and Congresswomen have some studying to do," and he suggests that voters start keeping this mind. "We need to value digital literacy in the people we elect," he concludes. "That is, if we don’t want to have another Cambridge Analytica on our hands."