Zuckerberg has said that Facebook would roll out controls to users worldwide required under Europe’s privacy rule, known as the General Data Protection Regulation. Some privacy activists said they hoped the executive’s promise would be a starting point to prompt lawmakers to push for tighter measures and reject other industry attempts to water down regulation.

"When lawmakers hear the head of Facebook say they would support a GDPR-style bill in the U.S., that’s important," said EPIC’s Rotenberg.

Rotenberg and Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, acknowledged the possibility that Zuckerberg could add momentum to a push for a national privacy law, but said that after years of scandals they have little faith in the company’s credibility to set the course of U.S. policy and would need to hear more details about what Facebook is actually proposing.

Zuckerberg’s move also isn’t the first time Facebook has broken ranks with its internet brethren. In 2017, technology companies including Facebook and Google opposed an effort to curb online sex trafficking by making the companies liable when users posted content that facilitated sex trafficking on their platforms.

Tarnished Reputations

In November 2017, though, Facebook moved to support a more nuanced version of the measure that ultimately passed, but the internet platforms, which had once enjoyed a glowing reception in Washington as innovators driving economic growth, soon began grappling with tarnished reputations over their impact on society.

Zuckerberg’s bid for regulation sets Facebook on a more vocal course than Google and its other rivals over how to address harmful content or draft a federal privacy law. Industry groups are seeking a privacy measure that would be more palatable to U.S. companies than the European regulation Zuckerberg advocates.

"It puts Google and others in a difficult spot," said CDD’s Chester. "How can they call for less privacy rights for Americans if one of the industry’s leaders says Congress needs to do better?"

The most contentious debates over privacy legislation in Congress center around a question that Zuckerberg didn’t address head on in his weekend sortie -- whether a federal law would override California’s restrictive privacy rules. That’s an issue that has drawn active lobbying by industry groups, including several that include Facebook.

"Is this just another Mark mea culpa that he makes at times of company crises?" Chester said. “The real proof is not what you put in print today, but what the company does on the Hill tomorrow,” Chester added.