"Are you a human?"
That's what the internet is asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after his appearances Tuesday and Wednesday in front of House and Senate committees to answer for the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
People took to Twitter Tuesday to make fun of the way Zuckerberg took a sip of water as if he has never had to drink water before in his life. Many compared him to a fictional "Star Trek: The Next Generation" character Data, who is an artificial intelligence.
Even the popular images subscription service Getty Images joined in by tweeting a photo of Zuckerberg with the caption "Deer. Headlights."
While some House members were well-versed in the privacy scandal in which the data firm Cambridge Analytica misused Facebook users' data from up to 87 million users, many members were out of touch on the fundamentals of how Facebook works. The internet noticed.
On Tuesday, 84-year old Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who had been a senator for nearly eight years when Zuckerberg was born, asked how Facebook's business model works given that it is free.
"Senator, we run ads," Zuckerberg explained, a smile breaking through his solemn demeanor.
The internet shifted its attention to the Congress members and Zuckerberg was no longer the subject of the hearing but rather a co-star.
In the fourth hour of the House hearing on Wednesday, Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., asked a question Zuckerberg had been asked multiple times. Once again, it was about the basic way Facebook works.
"How can someone control keeping the content within the realm they want it to without being collected?" Mullin asked.
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"If you don't want any data to be collected around advertising, you can turn that off and we won't do it," Zuckerberg reiterated.
Part of the problem was the structure of the hearings. Dozens of lawmakers had just four or five minutes to ask questions. Tough follow-up queries were few.
Another was age: The average age of senators who questioned Zuckerberg is 62, with several in their 80s.
The Associated Press' Mae Anderson contributed to this report.
