It’s been four years since Facebook became embroiled in its biggest scandal to date: Cambridge Analytica. In addition to paying $4.9 billion to the Federal Trade Commission in a settlement, the social network has just agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit, making it the biggest settlement ever in a privacy case.
To recap, a whistleblower revealed in 2018 that now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal data of almost 90 million users without their consent for targeted political ads during the 2016 US presidential campaign and the UK’s Brexit referendum.
The controversy led to Mark Zuckerberg testifying before congress, a $4.9 billion fine levied on the company by the FTC in July 2019, and a $100 million settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. There was also a class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 on behalf of Facebook users who alleged the company violated consumer privacy laws by sharing private data with other firms.
Facebook parent Meta settled the class action in August, thereby ensuring CEO Mark Zuckerberg, chief operating officer Javier Oliva, and former COO Sheryl Sandberg avoided hours of questioning from lawyers while under oath
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This doesn’t mark the end of Meta’s dealings with the Cambridge Analytica fallout. Zuckerberg is facing a lawsuit from Washington DC’s attorney general Karl A. Racine over allegations that the Meta boss was personally involved in failures that led to the incident and his “policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct.”
Source: Meta agrees to $725 million settlement in Cambridge Analytica class-action lawsuit | TechSpot
Robin Edgar
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