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Nov. 27, 2018 / 10:12 AM GMT
By Alastair Jamieson
LONDON — Lawmakers from around the world were expected to question a top Facebook executive over “fake news” on Tuesday at a hearing that CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused to attend.
Politicians and other top officials from at least seven countries will grill Richard Allan, the social media giant’s vice president of policy solutions, at the House of Commons in London.
Representatives from the U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland, Argentina, Brazil, Singapore and Latvia invited Zuckerberg to give evidence, even by video link, but he declined.
The event is billed as the inaugural “Grand Committee on Disinformation.” It is organized by Damian Collins, the British lawmaker who chairs a parliamentary committee investigating disinformation and the use of people’s data.
The committee turned up the heat by seizing confidential Facebook documents from the developer of a now-defunct bikini photo-searching app.
The documents contain revelations Facebook has been fighting to keep out of the public domain, The Observer newspaper reported. The committee used its powers to force the chief executive Six4Three, Theodore Kramer, who was on a business trip to London, to turn over the files. Kramer refused but was escorted to parliament and told he risked imprisonment if he didn’t comply, The Observer reported.
Collins later tweeted that this committee could publish the files if they were relevant to its inquiry.
Facebook wants the files to be kept secret and a judge in California ordered them sealed earlier this year.
“Six4Three’s claims are entirely meritless,” the company said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.
Associated Press contributed.