UK: Facebook “misled” Parliament on data misuse

Senior managers at Facebook knew about a data breach associated with campaign consulting firm Cambridge Analytica before it was first reported in the media in 2015, according to a UU Parliament report that concludes the company “deliberately misled” a wide-ranging investigation into disinformation.

“Among  the  countless  innocuous  postings  of  celebrations  and  holiday  snaps,  some  malicious  forces  use  Facebook  to  threaten  and  harass  others,  to  publish  revenge porn, to disseminate hate speech and propaganda of all kinds, and to influence elections and democratic processes — much of which Facebook, and other social media companies, are either unable or unwilling to prevent,” says the report by Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

The sharp rebuke came in a 108-page report written by members of Parliament, who in 2017 began a wide-ranging study of Facebook and the spread of malicious content online. They concluded that the United Kingdom should adopt new regulations so lawmakers can hold Facebook and its tech peers in Silicon Valley accountable for digital misdeeds.