Anger in US over Facebook-Chinese data sharing

US lawmakers are furious Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not reveal in testimony before Congress that the company shared data with four Chinese companies.

New York: US lawmakers are furious Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg did not reveal in testimony before Congress that the company shared data with four Chinese companies Facebook has faced criticism from Republican and Democratic US lawmakers who demanded the social media company be more forthcoming about data it has shared with four Chinese firms.

The bipartisan criticism reflected rising frustration in Congress about how Facebook protects the privacy of the more than 2 billion people who use its services worldwide.

The leaders of the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee accused Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg of failing to disclose the company’s agreements with the Chinese firms when he appeared before them in April and testified about Facebook’s sharing of users’ personal information with third parties.

“Clearly, the company’s partnerships with Chinese technology companies and others should have been disclosed before Congress and the American people,” the panel’s Republican chairman, Greg Walden, and top Democrat Frank Pallone said.

Facebook responded that that Mr Zuckerberg spent more than 10 hours responding to lawmakers’ questions. “The arrangements in question had been highly visible for years - with many manufacturers advertising these features. But with fewer and fewer people relying on them, we proactively announced this spring we’d begin winding them down,” the company said in a statement.

It has said the contracts with smartphone maker Huawei Technologies and other Chinese firms were standard industry practice and necessary to ensure that people who bought electronic devices had ready access to Facebook services.

Facebook said it had control over the data sharing all along and that other tech firms struck similar arrangements with US and Chinese companies in the early days of smartphones.