The U.K.’s Channel 4 News aired secretly recorded footage purporting to show Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix discussing how political opponents could be discredited.
According to the report, he suggested sending “some girls around” to a political opponent’s house, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well.”
Cambridge Analytica in a statement "strongly denied the claims." In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight Nix said: “A lot of the allegations that have been put to Cambridge are entirely unfounded and extremely unfair.”
U.K. politicians also piled on the pressure on Facebook Inc. The social network must end its days of “move fast and break things,” U.K. Culture Secretary Matt Hancock told lawmakers in the wake of reports that a political advertising firm kept information on millions of the social network’s users without their consent.
In a series of angry comments to parliament about Facebook and its relationship with Cambridge Analytica, a data-analysis firm, Hancock said the company was going to have to improve its behavior.
Hancock said that the “Wild West” days of “digital companies who flout rules and think that the best thing to do is to move fast and break things without respect for the impact that has on democracy and on society” were over.
To cheers of support from across the chamber, Hancock also attacked the company for blocking whistleblower Christopher Wylie from its site. “I thought it was outrageous,” the Culture Secretary said. “We know in this house they don’t act fast enough to block other accounts of obviously outrageous behavior. It shows us that when they need to, they can block incredibly quickly."
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