Updated
Facebook is facing growing pressure after European
and US politicians called for investigations into reports that a
consultancy that worked on US President Donald Trump's campaign gained
access to data on 50 million users.
Key points:
- An analytics firm reportedly used data on millions of Facebook users to support the Trump campaign
- The European Parliament said politicians would investigate whether data misuse had taken place
- Two US Senators called on Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress
Two US senators have called on Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress and British Prime Minister Theresa May described the allegations as "clearly very concerning".
The backlash was a response to reports that the political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested private data on more than 50 million Facebook users to support Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign.
Facebook's shares were down 7 per cent, wiping around $US30 billion ($38.94 billion) off its market value and dragging the S&P 500 technology sector down almost 2 per cent.
The company's shares were on track for their biggest one-day percentage decline since October 2014.
The scrutiny presents a new threat to Facebook's reputation, which is already under attack over Russia's use of Facebook tools to sway American voters with "fake news" posts before and after the 2016 US elections.
Facebook said on Friday that it had learned in 2015 that a Cambridge University psychology professor had lied to the company and violated its policies by passing data to Cambridge Analytica from a psychology testing app he had built.
Facebook said it suspended the firms and researchers involved. It said the data had been misused but not stolen, because users gave permission.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said the allegations were "clearly very concerning … It is essential that people can have confidence that their personal data will be protected and used in an appropriate way".
Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said it would be considering the potential new evidence as part of its separate civil and criminal probe into whether Facebook user data had been abused in British elections.
The head of the European Parliament said on Monday that EU politicians would investigate whether data misuse had taken place, calling the allegations an unacceptable violation of citizens' privacy rights.
Facebook was already facing new calls on Saturday for regulation from US Congress and questions about personal data safeguards after reports in the New York Times and London's Observer over the weekend.
Photo:
Two US senators want Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress. (Reuters: Stephen Lam)
On Monday, Republican Senator John Kennedy joined his Democratic colleague Amy Klobuchar in calling on Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress about data use.
In a joint letter, they asked senate judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley to hold a hearing with Mr Zuckerberg and the chief executives of Alphabet Inc's Google and Twitter Inc, reflecting mounting bipartisan concern in Washington about how the companies share personal user data.
Firm 'took fake news to the next level'
Former Cambridge Analytica employee Chris Wylie, who blew the whistle on the firm, said it secured personal data in order to learn about individuals and then used it to create an information cocoon to change their perceptions."This is based on an idea called 'informational dominance,' which is the idea that if you can capture every channel of information around a person and then inject content around them, you can change their perception of what's actually happening," Mr Wylie told US media.
He said Cambridge Analytica's profiling algorithms "took fake news to the next level."
"[Cambridge Analytica] works on creating a web of disinformation online so people start going down the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs, websites … that make them think things are happening that may not be."This idea of "information dominance," of propaganda, Mr Wylie told The Guardian newspaper earlier, is the notion that if you can control all of the streams of information to your opponents, "you can influence how they perceive that battle space and you can then influence how they're going to behave and react".
Mr Wylie claimed Cambridge Analytica used the data it had while speaking with Russian businesses.
Cambridge Analytica has denied wrongdoing and said it deleted all data it received from a contractor after learning the data had been obtained in violation of Facebook policies.
The firm said none of that data was used in its 2016 election work for the "avoidance of doubt". President Donald Trump's campaign Saturday denied using the firm's data, saying it relied on the Republican National Committee for its data.
Mr Wylie left Cambridge Analytica in 2014, and it's not clear how the firm targeted people with misinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Reuters/AP
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