Welcome to the Tech Beam Ride Home for Monday, February 18th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today Parliament calls Facebook a digital gangster.

Australia's Parliament was hacked, a full year of Apple lineup rumors,

and since it's a holiday here in the US,

a mini long reads segment. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal actually broke in Britain if you'll recall as that was where

Cambridge Analytica was based. So the UK Parliament has been following up on

investigations around that scandal around fake news and

disinformation campaigns on social media especially on Facebook. The final

report from the Parliamentary Committee investigating these issues, the information Commissioner's Office. The

information commissioner's office.

That final report came out today and the results are scathing.

The report literally calls Facebook a, quote, digital gangster, end quote.

Quoting from the report,

companies like Facebook should not be allowed

to behave like digital gangsters in the online world

considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law."

Some more choice quotes from various sections of the report, not in chronological order by the way,

quote, Facebook's handling of personal data and its use for political campaigns

are prime and legitimate areas for inspection by regulators and it should not be

able to evade all editorial responsibility for the content shared by its users across its platforms.

And quote, social media companies cannot hide behind the claim of being merely a platform and maintain

...