Facebook GC In Center of Storm on Two Continents

Facebook is under pressure in the US and the UK to clarify how data collected on 50 million users, most of them identified US voters, was used to help Donald Trump win the presidency. The data was gathered by Cambridge Analytica, which has ties to Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. Last month both Facebook and the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, told a parliamentary inquiry on fake news that the company did not have or use private Facebook data. British MP Damian Collins has asked Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to testify. He said it was time for Mr Zuckerberg to “stop hiding behind his Facebook page”. Facebook banned the data analytics company on March 16, three years after it first discovered it had broken Facebook’s rules. Paul Grewal, Vice-president and deputy general counsel of Facebook, said his company was working to “determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists. That is where our focus lies as we remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information.” Senator Mark Warner has proposed an Honest Ads Act to regulate online political advertising the same way as television, radio and print. “This story is more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West,” he said.