British Lawmakers Accuse Facebook Of ‘Intentionally’ Violating UK Privacy Laws

A new report issued by British lawmakers argues Facebook “intentionally and knowingly” violated the United Kingdom’s data privacy and competition laws. The report, published by the U.K. Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday local time, suggested Facebook’s “handling of personal data, and its use for political campaigns, are prime and legitimate areas for inspection by regulators, and it should not be able to evade all editorial responsibility for the content shared by its users across its platforms.” The committee began studying the role of social media platforms ― specifically Facebook ―in peddling disinformation and interfering in political elections nearly two years ago. The report called on U.K. lawmakers to create regulations to hold tech giants like Facebook accountable for the malicious spread of online information. Parliament lawmakers reviewed a series of internal Facebook documents they obtained late last year from Six4Three, an app developer that filed a lawsuit against Facebook in the United States in 2015. According to the committee, those documents showed Facebook was “willing to override its users’ privacy settings in order to transfer data” to other big tech companies like Netflix and Spotify. Facebook has previously stated that it never sold users’ data and that those companies were business partners.