Facebook boss faces intense grilling from laughing MPs during parliament hearing

UK politicians have aggressively attacked Facebook, saying it misled them and has no morals.

The company's chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, was summoned by the UK parliament's media committee to defend Facebook against accusations it immorally stole data from users, assisted in the undermining of elections and gave people insufficient control of their data.

The committee suggested that it had being misled by Facebook, that the company had no morals, and that people could easily believe it would do anything for money. Mr Schroepfer said he disagreed.

Probably the strongest questioning came from Conservative MP Julian Knight. He accused Facebook of "bullying journalists, threatening academic institutions and impeding investigations by legal authorities", insisting that "Facebook is a morality-free zone" and the company is "the problem" at the centre of the myriad scandals involving data and advertising on the platform.

At one point, Mr Schroepfer even drew derisive laughter from the committee when he told them that he was more upset by the scandal than politicians were.

"We were slow to understand the impact at the time and I am way more disappointed in this than you are," he said.

Amid laughter, Mr Collins told Mr Schroepfer "It's a high bar".

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that," the Facebook executive replied. "It's something we're working very hard on."

MPs also compared Facebook to a vampire squid that is shoving itself into the entire culture.

In a wide-ranging and lengthy session of questioning, lawmakers asked the Facebook boss about everything from the spread of fake news to accusations that the site has enabled the genocide in Myanmar. They also asked in detail about the Cambridge Analytica data abuse that kicked off the site's current scandal.

But they were forced to address all of those questions to Mr Schroepfer, rather than Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Mr Zuckerberg said that he could not appear at the hearings and sent Mr Schroepfer instead – something that brought denunciations both at the time and once again during the hearings.

Mr Schroepfer said that the responsibility still lies with Mr Zuckerberg when it comes to the company's response to the data abuse scandal.

"The buck stops with Mark," he told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, adding "I don't know" when asked whether Zuckerberg would answer the lawmakers' questions.

Committee chairman Damian Collins said he would renew his request for Zuckerberg to give evidence to Britain's parliament.

Mr Schroepfer also said he was sorry if journalists felt that the company was trying to bully or silence them. Facebook has faced substantial criticism for suggesting it could sue the publication if it published a story about the misuse of Facebook data by Aleksandr Kogan, but Mr Schroepfer said he believed it was "standard practice" in the UK and the aim was to "correct some facts".

Asked again to apologise, he said: "I am sorry that journalists feel we are trying prevent them getting the truth out. That was not the intention."

He also addressed a controversial suggestion by Mr Kogan – the researcher who created the app that harvested users' data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal – that Facebook did not have any meaningful policy around the collection of data.

"Our primary product is to help people share with a limited audience," he said. "If you want to share with your friends only, that's the primary thing Facebook does.

"If we violate that trust and the data goes somewhere else then that's violating the core principles of our product," he said.