A scathing British parliamentary report on Monday branded Facebook "digital gangsters" who failed to fight the spread of fake news and violated data privacy. Lawmakers' 18-month investigation into technology companies and disinformation also accused the world's largest social media platform of trying to hide the extent of Russian interference in foreign elections. Facebook is coming under attack over its response to Russia's alleged use of misleading stories and targeted ads to sway the 2016 US presidential election and a series of European votes.

Its executives have further been accused of trying to either hide or suppress emerging evidence of foreign meddling flagged by its engineers. Parliamentary committee chair Damian Collins said Facebook "deliberately sought to frustrate our work by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions". Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg turned down three requests to appear before the committee.

"Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like 'digital gangsters' in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law," the 108-page report said. The committee urged a compulsory code of ethics for all tech companies that would be overseen by an independent UK regulator. It said Facebook should be obliged to take down "sources of harmful content".

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019