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Nov. 27, 2018 / 10:12 AM GMT / Updated 1:59 PM GMT
By Alastair Jamieson, Nick Bailey and Linda Givetash
LONDON — Lawmakers from around the world berated 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 nine countries grilled Richard Allan, the social media giant’s vice president of policy solutions, on the company’s data privacy practices — including a potentially major revelation about Russia-based collection of Facebook user data.
Representatives from countries including the U.K., Canada, Ireland, Argentina, Brazil, Singapore and Latvia invited Zuckerberg to give evidence, even by video link, but he declined. France and Belgium also attended Tuesday’s hearing at the House of Commons in London.
A chair was pointedly left open with Zuckerberg’s name printed on a place card in front of it.
Politicians appeared exasperated at times with Allan’s responses to questions. Charlie Angus, a Canadian lawmaker, brushed aside Allan’s admission that Facebook had faulted, instead focusing on the company’s lack of response to ongoing problems.
“We are not asking you to be perfect,” Angus said. “We are asking you to be accountable when issues come up such as genocide, such as misinformation.”
Angus also pointedly referenced Zuckerberg’s absence in relation to the need for greater regulation of the company.
“We have to start looking at a method of holding you and your company to be accountable, because Mr. Zuckerberg, who is not here, doesn’t appear to be willing to do the job himself,” Angus said.
The event is billed as the inaugural “Grand Committee on Disinformation.” It was organized by Damian Collins, the British lawmaker who chairs a parliamentary committee investigating disinformation and the use of people’s data.
Collins said he was “deeply disappointed by Zuckerberg’s decision to ignore summons from so many nations.”
Among the concerns raised by lawmakers was Facebook’s policies regarding third-party application developers and the use and collection of user data, such as the app that pulled the user data of millions of Facebook users — data that eventually ended up in the possession of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
Collins offered a potentially important line of questioning in relation to a group of seized 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 Theodore Kramer, chief executive of Six4Three, the company behind the app, 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 referenced the documents when asking if Facebook had reported to any “external body” that a Facebook engineer had told the company in October 2014 that Russia-based computers were collecting “over 3 billion data points a day” through a Facebook access point.
Allan dodged the question, saying that information in the emails was “at best partial and potentially misleading.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment in relation to Collins’ allegation.
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.
Collins tweeted that this committee could publish the files if they were relevant to its inquiry.
Ian Lucas, a British politician, questioned Allan on when Zuckerberg became aware of the improper use of data for targeted political ads by the firm Cambridge Analytica and whether the company has taken action against other third-party developers for similar data breaches.
Allan said there have been a “number of actions taken” against developers but added, “I don’t have in front of me today all of the answers to all of the questions.”
Associated Press contributed.