“We need a radical change in the balance of power between these platforms and the public. The age of inadequate self-regulation must end, ”said Damian Collins, chairman of the House of Commons Commission on Digital, Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS). This is the summary of what was declared by the British parliamentarians in the Final Report on Disinformation and Fake News. According to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Facebook has deliberately breached privacy and competition law and should urgently be subjected to legal regulation. Facebook has been in the Commission's crosshairs for 18 months as part of an investigation into the phenomenon of "fake news" and its impact on the recent UK elections, including the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
The investigation denounces the company and its leaders by labeling them as "digital gangsters". According to the study the social media giant would be using its own dominance to crush rivals and prevent other platforms from competing with it. The internal Facebook documents reached in the hands of the committee showed that, through technology, the social violated laws by selling private data of people without their permission. Within the 108 report pages, the social media giant is accused of continuing to prioritize shareholder profits over users' privacy rights. "Facebook continues to choose profit over data security, taking risks in order to prioritize its goal of deriving money from user data," the report said, accusing the company of covering users' data leaks.
"It seems clear to us that Facebook only acts when serious violations become public." "Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like" digital gangsters "in the online world, believing they are above and beyond the law," he warned the report. Facebook "Digital Gangster": Russia's interference in the US elections.
The report also accuses Facebook of intentionally impeding its investigation and not having addressed Russia's attempts to manipulate the elections. "Democracy is at risk because of the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with misinformation and hidden and personalized advertising, coming from unidentifiable sources, provided through the main social media platforms we use every day", warned the committee chairman, Damian Collins.
Facebook, comments Giovanni D'Agata, president of the "Rights Desk", is believed to be embroiled in several cases, such as the allegations of Russian interference on its platform in the 2016 US presidential elections, but also the exploitation scandal by part of the Cambridge Analytica company user data without their knowledge for political purposes, as well as a security breach that led to the hacking of millions of accounts.