Zuckerman Quizzed On Reports Facebook Used Contractors To Attack Critics - US Senators

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th November, 2018) Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg needs to respond to allegations that his company hired contractors to spread hostile reports about its critics, four US senators wrote to Zuckerberg in a letter.

"We are gravely concerned by recent reports indicating that your company used contractors to retaliate against or spread intentionally inflammatory information about your critics," US Senators Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner, Chris Coons and Richard Blumenthal wrote in the letter on Friday.

Recent US media reports have alleged that Facebook has taken significant steps to undermine critics, including hiring partisan political consultants to retaliate and spread intentionally inflammatory information about people who have criticized the company, the letter said.

"[T]he staggering amount of data that Facebook has collected ... raises concern that the company could improperly or illegally use its vast financial and data resources against government officials and critics seeking to protect the public and our democracy," the senators wrote.

Since the 2016 US presidential election, both the US government and Facebook internal investigations have revealed that the company failed to adequately protect the data of its 2.2 billion users, Klobuchar's office noted in a press release.