LONDON, Feb 18, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A scathing British parliamentary report
on Monday branded Facebook “digital gangsters” that knowingly violated data
privacy and competition laws.
Lawmakers’ 18-month investigation into disinformation and “fake news” also
accused Facebook of failing to faithfully fight Russia’s alleged attempts to
influence elections.
Cultural select committee chair Damian Collins said Facebook “deliberately
sought to frustrate our work by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times
misleading answers to our questions.”
Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg turned down three requests
to appear before the committee.
“Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital
gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and
beyond the law,” the report said.
“Social media companies cannot hide behind the claim of being merely a
‘platform’ and maintain that they have no responsibility themselves in
regulating the content of their sites.”
The committee urged a compulsory code of ethics for all tech companies
that would be overseen by an independent regulator.
It said Facebook should be obliged to take down “sources of harmful
content” and disinformation.
“We further recommend that the Government launches an independent
investigation into past elections – including the UK election of 2017, the UK
Referendum of 2016, and the Scottish Referendum of 2014 – to explore what
actually happened with regard to foreign influence,” the report said.
British media quoted a response from Facebook saying it shared the
committee’s concerns about fake news and election integrity.
“We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee’s
recommendation for electoral law reform,” the company was quoted as saying.
But it added: “No other channel for political advertising is as
transparent and offers the tools that we do”.
The world’s largest social media platform has come under growing pressure
over the past two years over its handling of users’ private data as well as
Russia’s alleged attempts to influence US and various European elections.
The committee had earlier found that Facebook’s engineers had flagged
potentially malicious Russian activity as early as 2014 — long before it
became public.
It also accused Facebook of offering Netflix and other popular apps
preferential access to people’s data even after it had tightened its privacy
rules.