Mark Zuckerberg referenced 'The Social Network' during his testimony - but quickly added that the movie was of 'unclear truth'

AP

• Mark Zuckerberg mentioned the movie about him, "The Social Network," during his second day of testifying in front of lawmakers on Wednesday.
• Zuckerberg mentioned the film when asked about "FaceMash" - the prank website he created in college before Facebook.
• Zuckerberg has criticized the film in the past, so the fact he would mention it at all was unusual. 

During Mark Zuckerberg's second day of testifying in front of lawmakers on Wednesday, he referenced the movie based on the founding of Facebook, "The Social Network" - an unexpected move considering Zuckerberg has slammed the movie in the past for alleged inaccuracies.

Zuckerberg, who is testifying on Facebook's handling of personal information and Russian meddling in the 2016 election, didn't mention the 2010 David Fincher-directed film by name.

But when Congressman Billy Long asked Zuckerberg about "FaceMash," the Facebook founder seemed to imply that Long should just watch the movie to answer his own question.

"What was FaceMash and is it still up and running?" Long asked Zuckerberg.

"No, Congressman, FaceMash was a prank website that I launched in college in my dorm room before I started Facebook," Zuckerberg responded.

He went on to mention the film: "There was a movie about this, or it said it was about this."

But then he paused, as if his first instinct was to mention "The Social Network," but then he realized he wasn't a fan.

"It was of unclear truth," he said of the movie.

Zuckerberg and Long then got into a back-and-forth about whether FaceMash at all led to the development of Facebook.

The entire back-and-forth is odd, but even stranger is that Zuckerberg even acknowledged the film. He rarely speaks of it, and has been known to be critical of how it portrays him and the creation of Facebook.

In a 2014 public Q&A session, Zuckerberg said, "I think the reality is that writing code and then building a product and building a company is not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about, so you can imagine that a lot of this stuff they had to embellish or make up."

He also said that the movie, "Just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful."