Remember Cambridge Analytica? What do you know about $ 8B US trial against Meta’s board
More than seven years after a secrecy scam associated with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica consulting firm, a $ 8 billion US class action investors’ trial will begin against Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta Board members.
Amalgamated Bank Inc. The plaintiff will argue in the court in Wilmington, Dell, that the data harvesting of Facebook users in the Cambridge case was a violation of the 2012 agreement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
It is an investor’s case that Meta fought in all ways in the Supreme Court. The Nine Justice also heard the arguments last November, a few weeks later, unanimously a two or two weeks later, Case allowing the case to move forward,
Here’s a look at how the matter proceeded, and what is expected:
Cambridge Analytica, Revised
In 2018, due to a Canadian whistleblower, data of millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica. Now-a-domestic political counseling firm worked for the Republican candidate Ted Cruise, who still lost to Donald Trump, and then the firm worked for Trump during his successful 2016 President’s campaign.
Cambridge Analytica’s investors included Trump Ellie Steve Bannan and Robert Mercer, A recurrent billionaire Those who first agreed to support Trump’s campaign after Cruise.
Cambridge Analytica cut data on users who responded to the Facebook Quiz app, this is your digital life, as well as friends of those users.
Zuckerberg admitted that it was a “major violation of the trust” on the part of Facebook.
“We have a responsibility for the safety of your data, and if we can’t do we are not worth serving you,” he said in a statement in early 2018.
Scandal has been expensive for Facebook
FTC fined $ 5 billion on Facebook In view of the Cambridge Analytica scam, stating that the company had violated the 2012 agreement with FTC for the protection of user data. The same year, Facebook Reached $ 100 million disposal With the US Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors.
In 2022, Facebook Settlement of an American class-carriage case With users for $ 725 million, without accepting wrongdoing.
On its website, the company has said that it has invested billions of dollars to protect user privacy since 2019.
Who is going to testify?
The test will include Zuckerberg and other billionaire defendants, including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Venture Capitalist and Board Member Mark Andresen and former board member Peter Thial, Palantir Technologies co-founder and Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder.
For two years starting in May 2018, Jeffrey Zents, Chief of Staff of White House and Meta Director Jeffrey Ziants under the President Joe Biden are expected to be one of the first witnesses to stand before the Chief Justice of Delaware Chancery Court, Cathlin McCormic.
A lawyer for the defendants, who denied the allegations, refused to comment to Reuters.
What do shareholders want?
The shareholders want the defendants to reimburse the meta for FTC fine and other legal costs, which estimates more than $ 8 billion to the plaintiffs.
In court filing, the defendants described the allegations as “extreme” and said that the trial would be shown that Facebook hired an external counseling firm to ensure compliance with the FTC agreement and was a victim of deception of Facebook Cambridge Analytica.
In addition to the claims of privacy at the center of the Meta case, the plaintiff alleged that Zuckerberg estimated that the Cambridge Analytica scam would send the company’s stock less and resulted in selling its Facebook shares, in a pocket of at least 1 billion $ 1 billion.
Defendants said that the evidence would suggest that Zuckerberg did not trade on the inner information and used a stock-trading scheme that removes his control on sale and is designed for guards against insider trading.
The plaintiffs also argue that Sandberg and Ziants used individual email accounts to communicate about the major issues related to the suit, and did not shut down the auto-delete function, Being asked to preserve their records,
McCormic is expected to rule the months of liability and loss months after the end of the trial.
What has happened elsewhere?
Given Facebook’s global access, the scam gave birth to a variety of cases worldwide.
Canadian class-action trial arising from Cambridge Analytica Breach Rejected In Several provincial jurisdles,
The Supreme Court of Canada last month agreed to pay attention to whether Meta received the required meaningful consent by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act (PIPEDA), after A. Celebrity Commissioner report in 2019 It was found that 272 Canadian people downloaded the aforesaid quiz app, with about 622,000 Canadian information at risk.
Facebook disputed the findings of the report and in 2023, a federal court judge agreed with the controversy of the social media company that once a user authorized an app to disclose the information, its safety duties under Pipeda are abolished. The Federal Court of Appeal unanimously reversed that decision last year.
In the UK, Facebook was fined a maximum of £ 500,000 ($ 921,000 CDN) for violation of its data security laws.
Meta settled late last year The country’s privacy laws were violated, for the “no entry base” for $ 50 million Australian ($ 44 million CDN) after violating the country’s privacy laws by the Australian Information Commissioner’s office.
What was the political influence of Cambridge Analytica?
While the Democrats emphasized the revelations in 2018, its political influence was reduced by many experts.
A nature magazine check It has been evaluated that “the evidence of independent impact on Cambridge Analytica’s voter behavior is basically no one” and “it is also no evidence that Cambridge Analytica has actually deployed a psychological model while working for the Trump campaign.”
An expert at the University of Tofts at Massachusetts, American Senate in testimonySaid that there was a possibility that many Facebook users were misrepresented, compared to the view of a broad-based robocol.
“No evidence has been publicly generated publicly about the profiling or targeting of the firm, to suggest that its efforts were effective,” said Harsh, the author of the book, the author of the book. Hacking the Voters: How do the campaigns see voters.
Increasing the cruise loss for Trump, the British blog was more trenching, saying that “Cambridge Analytica’s attractive data science team was beaten by a friend with a thousand-dollar website.”
