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Zuckerberg Refuses UK Parliament Summons Over Facebook Data Misuse, Agrees To Testify Before Congress (techcrunch.com)
PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from TechCrunch: So much for "We are accountable"; Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has declined a summons from a UK parliamentary committee that's investigating how social media data is being used, and -- as recent revelations suggest misused -- for political ad targeting. The DCMS committee wrote to Zuckerberg on March 20 -- following newspaper reports based on interviews with a former employee of UK political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, who revealed the company obtained Facebook data on 50 million users -- calling for him to give oral evidence. Facebook's policy staff, Simon Milner, previously told the committee the consultancy did not have Facebook data. In a statement a Facebook spokesperson said it will be offering its CTO or chief product officer to answer questions. Today, CNN reports that Mark Zuckerberg has decided to testify before Congress within a matter of weeks, and Facebook is currently planning the strategy for his testimony. "The Facebook sources believe Zuckerberg's willingness to testify will also put pressure on Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to do the same," reports CNN. "Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has officially invited all three CEOs to a hearing on data privacy on April 10. That means Washington, not London, will be the stage for the trial of big tech."
Why would Zuckerberg comply with anything other than armed officers escorting him out of the building? The entire service was built on dishonesty. Stolen from another student, built to keep tabs on coeds they wanted to bang, and slurping and exploiting data on the other two billion people who have signed up since then. Facebook is toxic. Facebook is a cancer on the Internet. Facebook brings out the worst in people. Facebook breaks every privacy law a million times every day. The Internet needs to rid itself of Facebook.
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If I were Zuck, I'd stay the hell out of the U.K. as well. FB is an American company, and if every single parliament in the world starts to summon American CEOs, it simply doesn't work.
That's fine so long as those American companies "stay the hell out" of other countries too. However, if you are going to do business in those countries and especially if you are potentially involved in a massive violation of their online privacy laws then expect to get summoned by their governments, if not their courts.