UK lawmakers from parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have concluded that Facebook has intentionally violated users' privacy and competition laws in the United Kingdom by trading people's data to some application developers while preventing others from accessing the same information, the committee's report showed on Monday
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th February, 2019) UK lawmakers from parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have concluded that Facebook has intentionally violated users' privacy and competition laws in the United Kingdom by trading people's data to some application developers while preventing others from accessing the same information, the committee's report showed on Monday.
"The company [Facebook] was willing to: override its users' privacy settings in order to transfer data to some app developers; to charge high prices in advertising to some developers, for the exchange of data, and starve some developers ... of that data ... It is evident that Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws," the report, published on the official website of the UK parliament, said.
The committee members also urged authorities to launch a probe into the social network's practices related to the safety of people's private data and Facebook's possible involvement in unfair competition.
"By choosing not to appear before the Committee and by choosing not to respond personally to any of our invitations, Mark Zuckerberg has shown contempt towards both our Committee and the 'International Grand Committee' involving members from nine legislators from around the world," the lawmakers added.
The lawmakers' based their evidence on Facebook's internal emails and messages obtained from Six4Three, a now-defunct application, which sued the tech giant in 2018 for using unfair competition practices and creating a scheme to boost the network's ability to access user data.
Six4Three went out of business in 2015 after Facebook made changes to the platform to prevent users from sharing their friends' data with developers but granted some applications a short extension, of which Six4Three was not a part.
Facebook, in turn, denied ever selling users' personal data and insisted that the leaked documents were taken out of context.
