British lawmakers remain unsatisfied with Facebook’s response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, fake news, and other issues that have been plaguing the world’s largest social media network in recent times, parliamentary committee chair Damian Collins said earlier this week. The tensions between the Menlo Park, California-based company and London have been rising in recent times, especially as Facebook’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer calls to appear in front of British lawmakers and answer questions about the Cambridge Analytica debacle.
Facebook is still displaying “a pattern of evasive behavior,” Mr. Collins said as part of his latest communication with the social media juggernaut, dismissing answers to questions about the manner in which it accepts, manages, and monitors political advertising on its platform. Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer was grilled by the committee for close to five hours over the matter in late April but the lawmakers concluded he provided inadequate and evasive answers to many questions. Besides Cambridge Analytica which compromised a number of British nationals in 2016 using a misleading online personality quiz which mined data on users and their Facebook friends, London is presently also investigating the role foreign agents may have played in spreading a pro-Brexit sentiment on Facebook in the run-up to the early 2017 referendum which saw the UK vote to leave the European Union.
Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news and other malicious activities from various actors on its network have been intensifying in recent times, primarily through new hirings made by its content review unit, as well as additional artificial intelligence investments. The company’s stock completely recovered after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and even reached an all-time high late last month after breaking the $200 mark. Facebook is presently in the process of restricting user data access previously obtainable by third-party developers on its platform and is expected to make more pro-privacy moves in the coming months.