Pressure mounts on Facebook as U.S., EU urge probes of data practices
Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced calls on Monday from U.S. and European lawmakers to explain how a consultancy that worked on President Donald Trump’s election campaign gained improper access to data on 50 million Facebook users.
Reuters reported that Facebook’s shares closed down nearly 7 percent, wiping nearly $40 billion off its market value as investors worried that new legislation could damage the company’s advertising business.
“The lid is being opened on the black box of Facebook’s data practices, and the picture is not pretty,” said Frank Pasquale, a University of Maryland law professor who has written about Silicon Valley’s use of data.
Lawmakers in the United States, Britain and Europe have called for investigations into media reports that political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the private data on more than 50 million Facebook users to develop techniques to support Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign. (reut.rs/2pn8btD)
The scrutiny presents a fresh threat to Facebook’s reputation, which is already under attack over Russia’s alleged use of Facebook tools to sway U.S. voters with divisive and false news posts before and after the 2016 election.
Facebook said on Monday it had hired digital forensics firm Stroz Friedberg to carry out a comprehensive audit of Cambridge Analytica, which had agreed to comply and give the forensics firm complete access to their servers and systems.
Cambridge Analytica said it strongly denies the media claims, and that it deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a third-party app in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules.
But further allegations about the firm’s tactics piled up on Monday, as Channel 4 News, a British broadcaster, published video of Cambridge Analytica executives talking about using bribes, former spies and Ukrainian sex workers to entrap politicians.
