Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s equivocating response when asked by CNN if he’d acquiesce to lawmakers’ demands that he appear to testify is starting to make a lot more sense.
According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg has declined to appear before the UK Parliament to answer questions about allegations of the company’s misuse of customer’s data. Instead, Zuck will send Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer or Chief Product Officer Chris Cox in his stead. They would be “well placed” to answer questions, the company said.
“Facebook fully recognizes the level of public and Parliamentary interest in these issues and support your belief that these issues must be addressed at the most senior levels of the company by those in an authoritative position,” wrote Rebecca Stimson, Facebook’s head of UK public policy, in a statement Tuesday.
“As such Mr Zuckerberg has personally asked one of his deputies to make themselves available to give evidence in person to the Committee.”
Stimson added that about 1% of global downloads of the app created by the researcher came from users in the European Union, including the U.K.
Damian Collins, the head of the committee that is also investigating the impact of social media on recent elections, had invited Zuckerberg to answer for a “catastrophic failure of process.”
Mark Zuckerberg declines request to appear before U.K. parliamentary committee and @DamianCollins. Recommends his Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer instead. Full letter here: pic.twitter.com/Q6EueSHu8a
— Joe Mayes (@Joe_Mayes) March 27, 2018
The committee was not available to comment to Reuters. Meanwhile, Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee who blew the whistle on the company’s data abuses, is set to testify on Tuesday.
via RSS https://ift.tt/2IY6Rpl Tyler Durden