Tech tracker round-up: Facebook back in the dock, while Seattle hits Amazon with new housing tax

Here the Evening Standard business team highlights all the major tech news today.

Top story sees Facebook back in the dock with UK politicians.

A parliamentary committee stated that the social network had failed to fully answer 39 questions examining data privacy and fake news, adding that it would ask the social media giant once again for the missing details.

The committee had put additional questions to Facebook after it said that the firm’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer had not addressed all its concerns during a parliamentary hearing last month.

Facebook UK’s head of public policy, Rebecca Stimson, gave 39 answers to the extra questions in a letter published by the committee. However, its head said that they lacked the detail they were looking for.

Damian Collins, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said: “It is disappointing that a company with the resources of Facebook chooses not to provide a sufficient level of detail and transparency on various points.”

As part of its inquiry, the committee has been investigating allegations of the improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 US election campaign.

Collins said that Cambridge Analytica was one of the areas where Facebook’s response had been insufficiently detailed.

In her letter, Stimson said that Facebook did not pass user information to Cambridge Analytica, although it did provide tools to a researcher who appeared to have shared the data with the consultancy.

“We have provided comprehensive responses to the 39 points that the committee raised following Mike Schroepfer’s testimony,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.

“While Mark Zuckerberg has no plans to meet with the committee or travel to the UK at the present time, we fully recognise the seriousness of these issues and remain committed to providing any additional information required for their inquiry into fake news.”

Meanwhile in the US Seattle’s city council approved a new tax for the city’s biggest companies, including Amazon, to combat a housing crisis attributed in part to a local economic boom that has driven up real estate costs at the expense of the working class.

Amazon, the city’s largest employer, said after the vote that it would go ahead with planning for a major downtown office building that it earlier had put on hold over its objections to a much stiffer tax plan originally proposed.

As passed on a 9-0 vote after a boisterous public hearing, the measure would apply to most companies grossing at least $20 million a year, levying a tax of roughly 14 cents per employee per hour worked within the city - about $275 annually for each worker.

That “head tax” formula is designed to raise $45 million to $49 million a year over the five-year life of the tax - down from an original $75 million annually - to build more affordable housing and support services for the homeless. The tax would end after five years unless renewed by the city.

Amazon had led private-sector opposition to the plan, saying earlier this month it was freezing expansion planning for Seattle pending the outcome of Monday’s action.

The tax also would hit such Seattle-based stalwarts as coffee retailer Starbucks and department store chain Nordstrom, as well as California-based tech giants like Apple, Google and Facebook that have enough of a presence in Seattle that they would be subject to the new levy.

Finally in London management software firm Clear Review has secured £500,000 from Mercia Fund Managers.

Clear Review is a performance management platform for the workplace, intended as an alternative to annual appraisals. The platform allows managers to set goals and objectives and provide continuous feedback to employees.