UK slaps ‘digital gangster’ Facebook

Facebook executives have been vilified as “digital gangsters’’, in a damning report tabled in Westminster.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of contempt of parliament for refusing to give personal evidence to the Westminister committee three times. Picture: AFP

Facebook executives have been vilified as “digital gangsters’’ as they deliberately broke privacy and competition laws, allowing shadowy organisations to mine user data to influence elections around the world, including in Australia.

Facebook faces a slew of new British rules in the wake of a damning report tabled in Westminster following the digital, culture, media and sport committee’s 18-month investigation, which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg failed to attend.

Mr Zuckerberg, who heads the social media company that made $40 billion in revenue in 2017, has been accused of contempt of parliament for refusing to give personal evidence to the committee three times, and Facebook has been accused of disingenuous behaviour and acting in bad faith.

“Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law,” the report warns.

Alarmingly, the committee uncovered evidence that Australian voters had been manipulated in previous elections, although details of which elections and which political parties had access to the data are unknown.

A group of companies called SCL (Strategic Communications Laboratories), which included Cambridge Analytica, was not only “ghosting in and out’’ of elections, but the report highlights how SCL companies were interwoven and using Facebook and other social media data in military, defence, intelligence and security realms.

Mark Turnbull, former managing director of SCL Elections, and Alexander Nix, the then CEO of Cambridge Analytica, had been secretly recorded on a British television program boasting: “We do incognito very well indeed … we have many clients who never wish to have our relationship with them made public.

“We’re used to that, we’re used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows … I look forward to building a long-term and secretive relationship with you.”

The committee said: ’’What became clear is that without the knowledge of most politicians and election regulators across the world, not to mention the wider public, a small group of individuals and businesses had been influencing elections across different jurisdictions in recent years.’’

Countries that had been exposed to such influence of SCL Elections and associated companies included Australia, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Gambia, Germany, Ghana (2013), Guyana, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya (Kenyatta campaigns of 2013 and 2017), Kosovo, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, The Philippines, Slovakia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St ­Vincent and the Grenadines, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, and Britain.

Facebook said it had made substantial changes to political advertising standards but denied it had broken any laws. “While we still have more to do, we are not the same company we were a year ago,” Facebook UK’s public policy manager Karim Palant said.