Legislators from ten parliaments put the squeeze on Facebook

The committee was formed last year after Facebooks CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to give evidence to a wide-ranging UK parliamentary enquiry into online disinformation and the use of social media tools for political campaigns.

But while Zuckerberg still, seemingly, does not feel personally accountable to international parliaments even as his latest stand-in at todays committee hearing, policy chief Monika Bickert, proudly trumpeted the fact that 87 per cent of Facebooks users are people outside the US global legislators have been growth hacking a collective understanding of nation-state-scale platforms and the deleterious impacts their data-gobbling algorithmic content hierarchies and microtargeted ads are having on societies and democracies around the world.

Incisive questions from the committee today included sceptical scrutiny of Facebooks claims and aims for a self-styled Content Oversight Board it has said will launch next year with one Irish legislator querying how the mechanism could possibly be independent of Facebook , as well as wondering how a retrospective appeals body could preventcontent-driven harms.

Another question was whether the companys planned Libra digital currency might not at least partially be an attempt to resolve a reputational risk for Facebook, of accepting political ads in foreign currency, by creating a single global digital currency that scrubs away that layer of auditability.

Twitters recently announced total ban on political issue ads also faced some critical questioning by the committee, with the company being asked whether it will be banning environmental groups from running ads about climate change yet continuing to take money from oil giants that wish to run promoted tweets on the topic. Karen White, director of public policy, said they were aware of the concern and are still working through the policy detail for a fuller release due later this month.

But it was Facebook that came in for the bulk of criticism during the session, with Bickert fielding the vast majority of legislators questions almost all of which were sceptically framed and some, including from the only US legislator in the room asking questions, outright hostile.

And if you know this story about an antique creature when you chopped out one head two or seven came up so there is a risk you do not solve the problem you just have many more problems, she said.