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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Facebook sued over Cambridge Analytica data scandal:

Facebook is being sued for failing to protect users' personal data in the Cambridge Analytica breach.

The scandal involved harvested Facebook data of 87 million people being used for advertising during elections.

Mass legal action is being launched against Facebook for misuse of information from almost one million users in England and Wales.

Facebook said it has not received any documents regarding this claim.

The group taking action - Facebook You Owe Us - follows a similar mass action law suit against Google.

(NB - Emphasis retained from original article)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Facebook paid FTC $4.9B more than required to shield Zuckerberg, lawsuit alleges:

In a newly unsealed lawsuit, Facebook shareholders allege that the company intentionally overpaid a $5 billion Federal Trade Commission fine to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg from further government scrutiny.

"Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and other Facebook directors agreed to authorize a multi-billion settlement with the FTC as an express quid pro quo to protect Zuckerberg from being named in the FTC's complaint, made subject to personal liability, or even required to sit for a deposition," the lawsuit says (emphasis in the original). An early draft of the order obtained by The Washington Post through the Freedom of Information Act shows that the commission was considering holding Zuckerberg responsible.

The FTC levied the fine in July 2019 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw political operatives harvesting the personal data of 50 million Facebook users without their consent. (The lawsuit says only 0.31 percent of the affected users consented.) The fine (which was a record for privacy-related penalties) was 50 times larger than the maximum prescribed by a previous FTC consent decree, the lawsuit alleges. It was also well in excess of the previous record fine of $168 million.

"Facebook's maximum monetary exposure was $104,751,390—about $4.9 billion less than it agreed to pay," shareholders said in the lawsuit. The overpayment, they said, is a breach of fiduciary duty.

The lawsuit also alleges that, by withholding information about the Cambridge Analytica leak, executives and board members, including Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, engaged in insider trading. "After Zuckerberg learned of Cambridge Analytica's massive extraction of Facebook user data, he and the entities controlled by him significantly accelerated his sales of Facebook shares," the lawsuit says.

upstart writes:

Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica lawsuit alleging millions of users' data exposed:

Facebook has agreed to settle a four-year federal lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access private user data, according to court filings.

The settlement – the terms of which have not been disclosed by Meta Platforms, the social media giant's parent company – brings closure to a long-running case alleging that Facebook violated consumer privacy laws by sharing millions of users' data with third parties, including the now-defunct British firm connected with Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

[...] The agreement was reached before a 20 September deadline for Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to submit pre-trial depositions in the case.

Now-former COO Sheryl Sandberg, who announced she is leaving the company after 14 years earlier this year, also was likely to be deposed.

[...] The lawsuit asserted Facebook is both a "data broker and surveillance firm" as well as a social network.

A spokesperson for Facebook told The Independent that the company does not have a comment at this time.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Meta settles Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725m:

Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay $725m (£600m) to settle legal action over a data breach linked to political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

The long-running dispute accused the social media giant of allowing third parties, including the British firm, to access Facebook users' personal data.

The proposed sum is the largest in a US data privacy class action, lawyers say.

[...] Tech author James Ball told the BBC it was "not a surprise" that Meta has had to agree to a serious pay-out but that it was "not that much" money to the tech giant.

"It's less than a tenth of what it spent on its efforts to create 'the metaverse' last year alone," he said.

"So Meta probably won't be too unhappy with this deal, but it does stand as a warning to social media companies that mistakes can prove very costly indeed."

[...] "This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case," lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said in a statement.

[...] The class size is "in the range of 250-280 million" people, according to the ruling document, representing all Facebook users in the US during the "class period" which runs from 24 May, 2007 to 22 December, 2022.

It is not clear how the plaintiffs would claim their share of the settlement.

Janis Wong, a privacy and ethics researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, said it would only amount to two or three dollars per person if each individual decided to make a claim.

This doesn't even look like it would cover both a coffee and donut at Tim Hortons.

Original Submission