The U.K. and Canada have convened an “international grand committee” on disinformation and fake news and have written to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg to call for him to give evidence when it meets on Nov. 27.
U.K. and Canadian probes into fake news have both previously attempted to get Zuckerberg to appear, without success. In a letter to the Facebook boss the Brits and Canadians jointly said they “understand that it is not possible to make yourself available to all parliaments” but add they believe international Facebook users “need a line of accountability to your organization—directly, via yourself.”
The U.K.-Canada cooperation comes through the alignment of the U.K.’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee and Canada’s Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. They said, Tuesday, that other countries are expected to join their new international committee.
It will scrutinize disinformation and governance of the internet and issue findings later this year. Facebook has already been slapped with a fine in the U.K. for the Cambridge Analytica data breach, and in separate news the U.K. is set to implement a new tax on Facebook and other digital firms on the revenues they generate in Britain.
In their letter to Zuckerberg, U.K. committee chief and politician Damian Collins and his Canadian counterpart Bob Zimmer note there has never been an international committee hearing of this kind on digital news. “Given your self-declared objective to ‘fix’ Facebook, and to prevent the platform’s malign use in world affairs and democratic process, we would like to give you the chance to appear at this hearing,” they said.