MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Facebook cannot be trusted to self-regulate, the authorities may need to start looking for methods to hold the company accountable, Charlie Angus, the vice chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics at the Canadian parliament, said Tuesday, at a special hearing in the UK parliament.

'Don't you see that by using the same tactics of misinformation, rather than being accountable, that you've lost public trust and cannot be trusted to police yourselves?… I put it to you that you have lost the trust of the international community to self-police and that we have to start looking at the methods for holding you and your company accountable', Angus told Richard Allan, the vice president of policy solutions at Facebook.

The Canadian lawmaker has also questioned the motives behind the absence of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the hearing.

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Lawmakers from the United Kingdom, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, and Singapore gathered at the session in the UK parliament to ask the representative of the company about its key policies and practices regarding privacy and fight against disinformation.

Last week, the social network admitted that it had hired the Definers PR company in an effort to improve Facebook's reputation. The PR firm had been asked, in particular, to do research on billionaire George Soros, who had spoken critically of Facebook.

After Definers learned that Soros had been sponsoring some members of a new anti-Facebook organization, the firm made that information available to the press. In addition, Definers Public Affairs pitched negative stories on other tech giants, Google and Apple, highlighting their policy issues and downplaying Facebook's shortcomings.

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Facebook’s outgoing head of public policy and communications, Elliot Schrage, assumed responsibility for hiring the Definers firm, while Zuckerberg said he was not aware of Facebook ties to the firm.

Earlier this year, the company faced another scandal as it emerged that the data of its users had been allegedly improperly shared, via a third-party app, with political campaigning firm Cambridge Analytica.