Congress grills Zuckerberg on everything from Libra to hate speech on Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has testified before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, where Congress members have raised their concerns about the company's past and future dealings.

Zuckerberg's optimistic attitude seems to have dwindled down in the past weeks as major partners such as PayPal, Visa, Stripe, and MasterCard withdrew from Libra.

Waters told Zuckerberg that Congress has "Opened up a serious discussion" about Facebook should be broken up and called for a "Moratorium" on the entire project.

Zuckerberg's opening statement went over the concerns raised by Waters, with the CEO saying he understood the concerns lawmakers had with Libra.

Zuckerberg warned the committee members that stifling "Innovation" such as Libra would give an upper hand to its biggest rival-China.

The hearing quickly wandered off crypto-related topics, as several Congress members grilled Zuckerberg on issues such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, election interference, and hate speech on the platform.

Republican congressman Ted Budd put Libra back on the table by asking Zuckerberg on how he planned to allow the regulation of the company's stablecoin.

Apart from a couple of outliers, most Congress members found it hard to trust both Zuckerberg and Libra, with Representative Chuy Garcia saying he will introduce a "Keep Big Tech Out of Finance" bill later in the day.

Timothy McHenry, a North Carolina representative, was one of the few that have agreed with Zuckerberg's calls for easing on Libra.

While the six-hour hearing ended on a lighter note, it's clear that Congress is anything but a fan of Zuckerberg.