According to an article by the Washington Post, on Sept. 19, the Democratic Senator Mark R. Warner said that during a Sept. 18 dinner with Democratic lawmakers, Zuckerberg heard “consistent concerns about privacy, concerns around vile content and how it came to be dealt with.”
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with a handful of United States lawmakers, where he was met with intense scrutiny of Facebook’s proposed Libra stablecoin project.
The U.S. senator added that members asked specific questions about Facebook’s plans to launch Libra stablecoin, a cryptocurrency that has seen plenty of scrutiny in recent months from policymakers around the world.
Zuckerberg grilled by Democratic lawmakers
Warner added:
“One of the things I’m very worried about is, when the Facebook representative testified before the Senate, before my committee, he said, ‘You know, if we can’t get American regulatory approval, we won’t launch,’ … We hear lots of indication Facebook may choose to launch in other nations first. … So somebody is not telling the truth.”
Warner seemed convinced that Zuckerberg heard the concerns from the US policymakers, however, he added:
“I still don’t have 100 percent clarity on whether they feel like they can launch short of U.S. regulatory approval.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who was also present during last night’s dinner, said that he welcomed “the strong, constructive interest shown by Mr. Zuckerberg”, adding:
“We talked about some of the most pressing challenges facing the tech industry, including its repeated failures to protect election security and consumer privacy. I focused on the challenges of privacy safeguards.”
Zuckerberg aims to win over US Policymakers
Cointelegraph reported earlier that Zuckerberg is in Washington for meetings with policymakers to discuss internet regulatory matters such as privacy, competition and its handling of political content. These meetings come after months of intense scrutiny of Facebook’s planned Libra stablecoin project from United States lawmakers and regulators.
Facebook facing resistance from European lawmakers
This month, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that France will not authorize the development of Libra on European soil, followed by the recent news that German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz stated that policymakers cannot accept parallel currencies such as Facebook’s proposed Libra stablecoin.
Fraudulent TON Investment Ads Reportedly Circulating Facebook
Fraudulent advertisements have reportedly begun circulating Facebook offering to join the Telegram Open Network (TON) investment platform.
As Russian news outlet Kommersant reported on Sept. 20, ads promoting the so called “Successful Investor” account appeared on Facebook. Once clicked, the ad leads to a website disguised as Russian economics and technology media outlet RBC, where a publication – which looks like an investigation article – has built-in links to a site with a video featuring a “unique scheme” of earnings and a form for registration supposedly for the TON platform.
After users divulge their email address and telephone number, the scheme promises that they can easily earn $150 to $235 per day. According to whois, a service for domain searches, the domain was registered on Aug. 30.
The TON platform has not yet been released. In late August, three anonymous investors in Telegram’s $1.7 billion private initial coin offering said that Telegram confirmed it would issue the first Gram tokens by October.
Earlier this month, Telegram rolled out its TON testnet explorer and node software on its website, two months ahead of its planned launch of the Gram digital currency.
In April, Cointelegraph reported that Telegram opened access to a private testing version of the TON blockchain to a select number of developers. Anonymous test developers said the blockchain demonstrated “extremely high transaction speed.”
Software startup TON Labs, which is managed by Telegram’s token offering investors, is reportedly building a Solidity compiler for its blockchain. This programming language is primarily used to develop smart contracts on the Ethereum network, thus making the TON blockchain compatible with Ethereum DApps.
