Mark Zuckerberg's EU Parliament grilling labelled 'missed opportunity' for failing to answer questions

European Parliament criticised for letting Zuckerberg off the hook

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been criticised for not answering many of the questions filed by MEPs when he appeared to give testimony yesterday.

While Zuckerberg apologised for the role the social media giant played in the Cambridge Analytica affair, and apologised for allowing fake news to proliferate on the platform he was effectively able to cherry-pick the questions he answered.

Indeed, many of the MEPs in attendance complained that the format mean that Zuckerberg had to wait for all of the leaders of the European Parliament's various political groups to ask several questions apiece before he could respond.

And Zuckerberg spent just 22 minutes picking which questions to answer from a long list, meaning many were missed.

In a follow-up press conference, a Facebook spokesman said that the MEPs had been aware of Zuckerberg's limited time, but added that they had decided to use up much of the allotted period speaking themselves.

He added, though, that Zuckerberg will provide follow-up written answers to the questions he didn't get time to answer.

One leading UK politician later said the session at the European Parliament had been a "missed opportunity".

"Unfortunately the format of questioning allowed Zuckerberg to cherry-pick his responses and not respond to each individual point," said chair of the UK Digital Culture Media and Sport Committee, Damian Collins.

The testimony took place just a week after the House of Commons committee chair slammed Facebook, labelling the social network "disappointing" for not being completely transparent following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

After Facebook "did not provide a sufficient level of detail and transparency", Collins said in an open letter published on Wednesday that the social media giant must not be taking the whole thing as seriously as it says it is.

He continued: "It is disappointing that a company with the resources of Facebook chooses not to provide a sufficient level of detail and transparency on various points including on Cambridge Analytica […] and that shows general discrepancies between Mike Schroepfer [the company's chief technology officer] and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's respective testimonies."

The Facebook CEO is still refusing to come to the UK to answer the Committee's questions in person, with Zuckerberg suspected of avoiding it because his PR fixers are unable to negotiate the terms of his appearance as they did in front of the European Parliament.