Facebook investor compares company’s handling of user data to ‘human rights violation’

Facebook investors reportedly vented frustrations about the company’s handling of user data during a shareholder meeting Thursday as the social networking site reels from months of scrutiny over its privacy policies.

“If privacy is a human right … then we contend that Facebook’s poor stewardship of user data is tantamount to a human rights violation,” Christine Jantz, an official with Facebook investor Northstar Asset Management, said during the meeting, according to Yahoo News.

Another investor, James McRitchie, reportedly told Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that the company was on the verge of becoming a “corporate dictatorship” given its recent fumbles with users’ data.

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During the meeting, Zuckerberg pledged that the social networking site would push to be more transparent in its efforts going forward, emphasizing a desire for the community to “hold us accountable,” according to Yahoo News.

Zuckerberg gave hours of testimony to lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee last month, where the billionaire technology executive faced questions about his company’s security policies and whether the social network should be regulated.

The hearings came after Facebook said that up to 87 million of its users had their data improperly gathered and used by the political research firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign in 2016.

Other lawmakers such as Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) questioned whether Facebook had become a monopoly, given its dominance “without any true competitor.”