Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg savaged by politicians from around the world for avoiding them

Facebook representatives agreed with MPs that it has acted to undermine public trust

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg failed to attend a Commons committee hearing into the CA scandal (AFP)

Facebook has been savaged by politicians from across the globe after boss Mark Zuckerberg once again refused to answer questions.

The company was accused of undermining democratic institutions and failing to take responsibility for the damage it had done to the world.

But the hearing was marked by the fact that Mr Zuckerberg had not arrived, despite a request that came from a coalition of lawmakers from around the world.

Instead, they chose to leave a chair open for the Facebook founder and criticised him for refusing to turn up.

Facebook is being investigated by lawmakers in Britain after consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, obtained the personal data of 87 million Facebook users from a researcher, drawing attention to the use of data analytics in politics.

Concerns over the social media giant’s practices, the role of political adverts and possible interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum and US elections are among the topics being investigated by British and European regulators.

While Facebook says it complies with EU data protection laws, a special hearing of international lawmakers in London criticised Mr Zuckerberg for declining to appear to answer questions on the topic.

“We’ve never seen anything quite like Facebook, where, while we were playing on our phones and apps, our democratic institutions ... seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California,” Canadian MP Charlie Angus said.

“So Mr Zuckerberg’s decision not to appear here at Westminster to me speaks volumes.”

Richard Allan, the vice president of policy solutions at Facebook, who appeared on Mr Zuckerberg’s behalf, admitted the company had made mistakes but said it had accepted the need to comply with data rules.

“I’m not going to disagree with you that we’ve damaged public trust through some of the actions we’ve taken,” Mr Allan told the hearing.

Facebook has faced a barrage of criticism from users and politicians after it said last year that Russian agents had used its platform to spread disinformation before and after the 2016 US presidential election, an accusation that Moscow has denied.

Mr Allan repeatedly declined to give an example of a person or app banned from Facebook for the misuse of data, aside from the GSR app which gathered data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Legal documents reviewed by Reuters showed how the investigation by British lawmakers had led them to seize documents relating to Facebook from app developer Six4Three, which is in a legal dispute with Facebook.

Damian Collins, chair of the culture committee, which convened the hearing, said he would not release those documents on Tuesday because he was not in a position to do so, although he had previously said that the committee had the legal power to.

Additional reporting by Reuters