Big techs like Facebook should be subject to code of ethics: British Lawmakers

Singling out Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg for what has been held as a failure of leadership and personal responsibility, the UK parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee said on Monday that the big techs have proven to be ineffective in stopping harmful content and disinformation on their platforms, adding that they should be subject to a compulsory code of ethics to tackle fake news and abuse of user's data.

The sharp rebuke came in a 108-page report written by members of Parliament, who in 2017 began a wide-ranging study of Facebook and the spread of malicious content online. They concluded that the United Kingdom should adopt new regulations so lawmakers can hold Facebook and its tech peers in Silicon Valley accountable for digital misdeeds.

"Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like 'digital gangsters' in the online world", UK  lawmakers said in their report, "considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law", The Washington Post reported.

"The guiding principle of the 'move fast and break things' culture often seems to be that it is better to apologise than ask permission", committee chairman Damian Collins said.

"We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people."

Collins said the age of inadequate self-regulation must come to an end.

"The rights of the citizen need to be established in statute, by requiring the tech companies to adhere to a code of conduct written into law by Parliament, and overseen by an independent regulator", he said.

Facebook became the focus of the committee's 18-month inquiry after whistleblower Christopher Wylie alleged that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had obtained the data of millions of users of the social network.

Zuckerberg apologised last year for a 'breach of trust' over the scandal.

But he refused to appear three times before British lawmakers, a stance that showed 'contempt' towards parliament and the members of nine legislatures from around the world, the committee said.

"We believe that in its evidence to the committee Facebook has often deliberately sought to frustrate our work, by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions", Collins said.

"Mark Zuckerberg continually fails to show the levels of leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from someone who sits at the top of one of the world's biggest companies".

Reuters stated that the lawmaker identified major threats to society from the dominance of tech companies such as Facebook - which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram - Google and Twitter.