Facebook and Twitter must be punished if they obstruct Parliament's Russia fake news probe, says senior MP

Facebook and Twitter must be punished if they continue to refuse to co-operate with a Parliamentary inquiry into Russian interference in the Brexit vote, a senior MP has said.

Damian Collins hit out as anger grows over the social media giants stonewalling the “fake news” probe by the digital, culture, media and sport select committee which he heads up.

Earlier this month, Mr Collins accused Twitter of a “completely inadequate” response to the committee’s request for information and Facebook of doing virtually “no work”.

The MPs want information about the extent of Russian interference in last year’s EU referendum, including details of accounts and pages.

Instead, in early December, the two companies merely handed over a copy of information already provided the Electoral Commission about advertising spend from Russia in the six weeks leading up to the vote.

Now Mr Collins has revealed that his committee is looking into what sanctions can be imposed on Facebook and Twitter – suggesting advertisers should also take action.

“What I didn't expect was that they would essentially completely ignore our request,” the Conservative MP said, describing the companies' response as “extraordinary”.

“They don't believe that they have any obligation at all to initiate their own investigation into what may or may not have been happening on the site - to look at the accounts that have been identified by the American authorities and say: “OK, are there other accounts that share similar characteristics that could have come from the same source?”

“They've not done any of that work at all.”

Mr Collins said he recognised that the social media giants are “best placed to monitor what is going on your own site” – but called for a “mechanism” to act when they fall short.

“If you fail to do that, if you ignore requests to act, if you fail to police the site effectively and deal with highly problematic content, there has to be some sort of sanction against you,” he warned.

On the questions of what sanctions, the committee chairman pointed to Germany as having “gone furthest down this road”.

The German competition authority accused Facebook of violating European data protection principles by merging information gathered through WhatsApp and Instagram with Facebook user accounts.

Mr Collins also suggested advertisers should punish social networks with a loss of revenue when they allowed fake accounts.

“If you're selling advertising against those numbers, that cannot be ethical, and clearly that is something the advertising industry should be interested in.”

Select committees have no direct powers to punish companies, but a recommendation would pile pressure on the Government, which is also concerned by the companies' stance.

In his letter to Twitter, Mr Collins said his committee had received “more information about activities that have taken place on your platform from journalists and academics than from you”.

The information given to the Electoral Commission identified small ad spends from known Russian actors.

Facebook said only $0.97 (73p) had been spent on Brexit-related ads seen by British viewers, while Twitter claimed the only Russian spending it was aware of during the period was $1,000 from the broadcaster RT.