Facebook and Twitter face ultimatum in Brexit fake news probe
FACEBOOK and Twitter have been issued with ultimatum to co-operate with an inquiry into fake news during the Brexit referendum campaign.
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Damian Collins, chair of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee blasted the tech giants for not complying with requests from the government.
He said the social media giants have until 18 January to share information for a probe into suspected Russian interference in the referendum campaign.
The MP hit out and accused Twitter of a “completely inadequate” response, and said Facebook had done “no work” to help the probe.
If they fail to comply the government would review actions to be taken against the tech titans, and he suggested advertisers should punish social media companies with a loss in revenue for allowing fake news accounts to exist.
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If you ignore requests to act... there has to be some sort of sanction against you
He said: ““If you're selling advertising against those numbers, that cannot be ethical, and clearly that is something the advertising industry should be interested in.”
Mr Collins said: "It's been over a month since we made the request to Facebook for this information and we need to see some action.
“They have ignored our requests... for information on any activity relating to fake accounts and in fact only responded in relation to accounts set up in the USA but not set up here.”
He added that they also had similar issues with Twitter.
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He added: “They are best placed to do their own investigating as they know the characteristics of their accounts holders and what payments have been made from Russian agencies and what accounts they relate to.”
And he warned: “If you fail to do that, if you ignore requests to act, if you fail to police the site effectively and deal with highly problematic content, there has to be some sort of sanction against you.”
He revealed that Facebook had removed 35,000 fake news accounts during the French presidential election earlier this year.fake news brevet probe.
Facebook has said only 73p has been spent on Brexit-related ads seen by British users, and Twitter has claimed the only russian advert it was aware of during the referendum campaign was a £740 ad from Russia Today.
The German competition authority has also accused Facebook of violating European data protection principles in merging information gathered from WhatsApp and Instagram with Facebook user accounts.
