The ongoing troubles of Facebook aren’t unknown to anyone. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica fiasco surfaced earlier this year, the social media company has been facing fire from privacy watchdogs around the world. Facebook’s top brass has also drawn the ire of the US government, with both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg having been summoned to Capitol Hill for testifying before the United States Congress. And if the latest news is any indication, Facebook’s woes aren’t going to be over anytime soon.
Recently, lawmakers from nine international parliaments assembled in London for the ‘International Grand Committee on Disinformation’. The meeting had been convened to question Mark Zuckerberg over allegations of Facebook being used as a platform to spread fake news and propaganda. But for some reason, Zuckerberg chose not to appear for the hearing.
According to a Mashable report, representatives from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore, and the UK were in attendance. While the Facebook CEO didn’t appear for the hearing, he was represented by Richard Allen, the company’s Vice President of Public Policy for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
However, the international lawmakers didn’t really like Zuckerberg’s decision to skip the meeting and minced no words to lambast the CEO.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like Facebook, where while we are playing on our phones and apps, our democratic institutions … seem to have been upended by frat boy billionaires from California,” Charlie Angus, a representative from Canada was quoted as saying by the Mashable report.
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At the hearing, Damian Collins, a British lawmaker, also detailed information regarding some sensitive documents that the UK Parliament had recently procured by exercising its legal powers. The documents, which likely contain evidence that Facebook knew about Russian interference on its platform as early as 2014, may be released as early as next week.
