New $8 billion lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica
Meter CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to face an $8 billion privacy lawsuit filed by the company's own investors.
Zuckerberg will be the main witness in a rare $8 billion lawsuit that began this week, Reuters reported.
The lawsuit alleges that the Meta CEO ran Facebook as an illegal enterprise, allowing users to collect their data without their consent.
The lawsuit against Zuckerberg and several current and former Meta executives was filed by investors in Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
They allege that they repeatedly violated a 2012 agreement between Facebook and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect users' data.
The lawsuit began in 2018. At the time, news reports emerged that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that has since been shut down, had accessed the data of millions of Facebook users. The business helped with Donald Trump's campaign for president in 2016.
Shareholders are seeking more than $8 billion in damages from Zuckerberg and other defendants in the lawsuit, including fines and other costs Meta paid after the Cambridge Analytica scandal was exposed. It also includes the record $5 billion fine that the FTC gave Facebook in 2019 for breaking a deal it made in 2012.
Sheryl Sandberg, Meta's former chief operating officer; Marc Andreessen, an investor and board member; Peter Thiel, a former board member and co-founder of Palantir Technologies; and Reed Hastings, All of the people being sued are co-founders of Netflix.
Zuckerberg and others did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment. However, in court documents they dismissed the allegations as “extremely outrageous.” Meta itself is not a defendant in the case, but it declined to comment, Reuters reported.
The trial, which began without a jury in Wilmington, Delaware, is set to last eight days. The trial will focus on events dating back a decade and Meta’s board meetings to determine how Facebook’s top executives implemented the FTC’s 2012 settlement.
The case is based on old policies, but it comes at a time when privacy concerns have not left Meta, Reuters reported.
Meta is currently under intense scrutiny over its AI model training. The US media giant has said since 2019 that it has spent billions of dollars to keep users' information safe.
Two years ago, the people who were being sued asked the court to throw out the case before it went to trial. But the judge denied their motion. At the time, Judge Travis Lasseter said, “This is a case where there is a very high level of wrongdoing.”
Judge Kathleen McCormick will be in charge of the case, which is now in Delaware's Chancery Court..
The people who are suing are private investors and people who work for union pension funds, like the California State Teachers Retirement System. They have to prove that Facebook’s board of directors grossly failed to fulfill their responsibilities. But winning such cases is difficult because proving directors’ failure is complicated.
Meanwhile, legal experts say this is likely the first time such allegations will be heard.
