Facebook has been slammed by MPs for failing to fully answer scores of questions about how it tackles data privacy and fake news with the chair of the Parliamentary committee investigating the Cambridge Analytica scandal saying “we expected detail and got excuses”.
The Commons select committee for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport is pressing for more detail and transparency from the social media giant after it said Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer had not addressed all of its concerns during a Parliamentary hearing last month.
Facebook UK’s head of public policy, Rebecca Stimson, gave 39 answers to the extra questions in a letter published by the committee, but chair Damian Collins insisted they lacked the detail the MPs were looking for.
Collins said that Cambridge Analytica was one of the areas where Facebook’s response had been insufficiently detailed. He added: “It is disappointing that a company with the resources of Facebook chooses not to provide a sufficient level of detail and transparency on various points. Given that these were follow-up questions to questions Mr Schroepfer previously failed to answer, we expected both detail and data, and in a number of cases got excuses.”
In her letter, Stimson said that Facebook did not pass user information to Cambridge Analytica, although it did provide tools to a researcher who appeared to have shared the data with the consultancy.
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