Meta Cambridge Analytica
Facebook / Meta's Cambridge Analytica is Mark Zuckerberg's Achilles Heel
Facebook / Meta Google Criminal Conspiracy Collusion
This lawsuit is being adjudicated by United States District Court Judge Vince Chhabria - San Francisco Courthouse 4 - 17th Floor Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102 - media@cand.uscourts.gov - (415) 5224051 - vcpo@cand.uscourts.gov
In re: Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation - 18-MD-2843-VC
Due to the level of interest in this case, this web page has been created to notify journalists and interested members of the public of important news and information about access to proceedings and to case information.
In re: Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation - 18-MD-2843-VC
Due to the level of interest in this case, this web page has been created to notify journalists and interested members of the public of important news and information about access to proceedings and to case information.
Mark Zuckerberg personally, ergo Facebook / Meta have criminally conspired and colluded with Sundar Pichai personally, ergo Google, to deliberately, knowingly and willfully, with impunity block dozens and dozens of protest websites belonging to this website owner, (California Elder Financial Abuse Act may also have been committed) and if any others have been damaged and harmed in any way by Facebook / Meta hopefully they will also be compelled to notify The Honorable Vince Chhabria regarding their criminal behavior which may have severe consequences preventing the above lawsuit settlement from being approved by the Court in his matter.
Here are some, but definitely not all, of the protest websites that have been criminally blocked for almost 2 years by Facebook / Meta along with coconspirator Google. (A coconspirator is a person who engages in a criminal conspiracy with another. S/he is member of a conspiracy, a joint or fellow conspirator.
A coconspirator is different from an accomplice after-the-fact. Under the statutory definitions, a coconspirator helps someone commit a crime, but an accomplice after-the-fact helps a person who has committed a crime evade the law. [State v. Skipintheday, 717 N.W.2d 42. Collusion is a secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others for any fraudulent or illegal purpose. The underlying crime is not as important as the "intent to commit a crime and the acts taken to plan for the crime".
The crime of Conspiracy pursuant to California Penal Code Section 182 § PC requires a prosecutor to prove the following elements: The defendant intentionally entered into an agreement with another person or persons to commit a crime. The defendant committed an overt act in furtherance of this agreement.
Under California Penal Code 182 § PC, you commit the crime of conspiracy when you:
1. agree with one or more other people to commit a crime, and
2. either you or one of the others commits an act to further that agreement.
The action taken to further the conspiracy does not need to be a crime; it only needs to be an action that begins to put the plan in motion. An “overt act” is done to help accomplish or advance the agreed-upon crime.
Criminal conspiracy may be charged either as a misdemeanor or a felony, depending mainly on the crime you allegedly conspired to commit:
The penalties for conspiring to commit a felony are typically the same as those for the planned crime.
California Penal Code 368 § PC defines elder abuse as the physical or emotional abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation of a victim 65 years of age or older. The offense can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor or a felony, and is punishable by up to 4 years of jail or prison.
Even if this settlement is approved, it would still be better for the world to have the depositions take place, this website will, along with all the other protest websites, remain ad infinitum for everyone to always remember the deceitful and illegal activities.
FacebookWhistleblowers.com
FacebookDarkPatterns.com
FacebookDiscrimination.com
FacebookChildAbuse.com
FacebookHumanSmuggling.com
FacebookPedophiles.com
FacebookSexTrafficking.com
FacebookRacism.com
FacebookKillingPeople.com
CrestmarkSucks.com
FacebookMarketplaceSucks.com
FacebookIncSucks.com
HorizonWorldsSucks.com
MetaBankSucks.com
MetaCashSucks.com
MetaFinancialSucks.com
MetaIncSucks.com
MetaPaySucks.com
MetaQuestSucks.com
MessengerSucks.com
PathwardSucks.com
PathwardBankSucks.com
WhatsAppSucks.com
A coconspirator is different from an accomplice after-the-fact. Under the statutory definitions, a coconspirator helps someone commit a crime, but an accomplice after-the-fact helps a person who has committed a crime evade the law. [State v. Skipintheday, 717 N.W.2d 42. Collusion is a secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others for any fraudulent or illegal purpose. The underlying crime is not as important as the "intent to commit a crime and the acts taken to plan for the crime".
The crime of Conspiracy pursuant to California Penal Code Section 182 § PC requires a prosecutor to prove the following elements: The defendant intentionally entered into an agreement with another person or persons to commit a crime. The defendant committed an overt act in furtherance of this agreement.
Under California Penal Code 182 § PC, you commit the crime of conspiracy when you:
1. agree with one or more other people to commit a crime, and
2. either you or one of the others commits an act to further that agreement.
The action taken to further the conspiracy does not need to be a crime; it only needs to be an action that begins to put the plan in motion. An “overt act” is done to help accomplish or advance the agreed-upon crime.
Criminal conspiracy may be charged either as a misdemeanor or a felony, depending mainly on the crime you allegedly conspired to commit:
The penalties for conspiring to commit a felony are typically the same as those for the planned crime.
California Penal Code 368 § PC defines elder abuse as the physical or emotional abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation of a victim 65 years of age or older. The offense can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor or a felony, and is punishable by up to 4 years of jail or prison.
Even if this settlement is approved, it would still be better for the world to have the depositions take place, this website will, along with all the other protest websites, remain ad infinitum for everyone to always remember the deceitful and illegal activities.
FacebookWhistleblowers.com
FacebookDarkPatterns.com
FacebookDiscrimination.com
FacebookChildAbuse.com
FacebookHumanSmuggling.com
FacebookPedophiles.com
FacebookSexTrafficking.com
FacebookRacism.com
FacebookKillingPeople.com
CrestmarkSucks.com
FacebookMarketplaceSucks.com
FacebookIncSucks.com
HorizonWorldsSucks.com
MetaBankSucks.com
MetaCashSucks.com
MetaFinancialSucks.com
MetaIncSucks.com
MetaPaySucks.com
MetaQuestSucks.com
MessengerSucks.com
PathwardSucks.com
PathwardBankSucks.com
WhatsAppSucks.com
Due to an ongoing Civil Lawsuit against Meta / Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is legally obligated to undergo 6 hours of depositions to be completed by September 20, 2022 and his recently employed former COO Sheryl Sandberg 5 hours and newly COO Javier Olivan 3 hours, as well as several others 2 hours each, and these will be conducted similar to a courtroom setting where they will all be sworn under oath, under penalty of perjury, to testify to the whole truth or suffer the extreme legal and criminal consequences for non compliance.
Deathly afraid from having to testify in a 6 hour deposition under oath, under penalty of perjury is why Facebook / Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg desperately agreed to enter into a "Settlement in Principle" to present to the Court for approval as referenced above to stay the Action and hopefully convince United States District Court Judge Vince Chhabria to approve said settlement.
It is this website owner's hope that The Honorable Vince Chhabria will take into consideration the criminal collusion that Mark Zuckerberg has conspired with Sundar Pichai of Google in rendering his decision concerning this potential settlement.
It is extremely difficult and immensely frustrating to have the general population not be able to view this specific website, but also numerous others, considering the criminal conspiracy collusion brought about by these two individuals. Their precise goal is to quash the content of these websites from being found in Google, which in essence renders them literally invisible. Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai do not want these protest websites to be accessible to the billions of Internet citizens and they have jointly suppressed this content by creating algorithms to prevent same.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have committed a "criminal offense" in his handling of political misinformation on the social networking site.
"Whether he engaged in something and amounted to collusion that in fact caused harm that would in fact be equal to a criminal offense, that's a different issue. That's possible. That's possible it could happen," Biden told The New York Times editorial board in an interview published Friday.
Biden also said he's "never been a big Zuckerberg fan," calling the CEO "a real problem."
He also called for the repeal of a law that shields Facebook and other online platforms from being held accountable for the content their users post.
He went on to suggest that Zuckerberg allowed the Russian government to use Facebook to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, although it was unclear exactly what he was accusing Zuckerberg of.
"The idea that he cooperates with knowing that Russia was engaged in dealing with using the internet, I mean using their platform, to try to undermine American elections. That's close to criminal," Biden said, adding that Zuckerberg must have known about Russia's influence campaign on Facebook before the CEO says he did.
Biden made the comments after being asked about a letter he sent to Facebook in October requesting that they remove a Trump campaign ad that falsely said that Biden offered Ukraine $1 billion in exchange for the removal of the country's top prosecutor.
He slammed Facebook for "propagating falsehoods they know to be false" by allowing politicians to make untrue statements in advertisements. And he argued for immediately revoking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which allows online platforms to escape most liability for content their users post.
"I've never been a fan of Facebook," Biden told The Times. "I've never been a big Zuckerberg fan. I think he's a real problem ... He knows better."
Read Biden's full interview with The New York Times editorial board here.
Deathly afraid from having to testify in a 6 hour deposition under oath, under penalty of perjury is why Facebook / Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg desperately agreed to enter into a "Settlement in Principle" to present to the Court for approval as referenced above to stay the Action and hopefully convince United States District Court Judge Vince Chhabria to approve said settlement.
It is this website owner's hope that The Honorable Vince Chhabria will take into consideration the criminal collusion that Mark Zuckerberg has conspired with Sundar Pichai of Google in rendering his decision concerning this potential settlement.
It is extremely difficult and immensely frustrating to have the general population not be able to view this specific website, but also numerous others, considering the criminal conspiracy collusion brought about by these two individuals. Their precise goal is to quash the content of these websites from being found in Google, which in essence renders them literally invisible. Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai do not want these protest websites to be accessible to the billions of Internet citizens and they have jointly suppressed this content by creating algorithms to prevent same.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have committed a "criminal offense" in his handling of political misinformation on the social networking site.
"Whether he engaged in something and amounted to collusion that in fact caused harm that would in fact be equal to a criminal offense, that's a different issue. That's possible. That's possible it could happen," Biden told The New York Times editorial board in an interview published Friday.
Biden also said he's "never been a big Zuckerberg fan," calling the CEO "a real problem."
He also called for the repeal of a law that shields Facebook and other online platforms from being held accountable for the content their users post.
He went on to suggest that Zuckerberg allowed the Russian government to use Facebook to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, although it was unclear exactly what he was accusing Zuckerberg of.
"The idea that he cooperates with knowing that Russia was engaged in dealing with using the internet, I mean using their platform, to try to undermine American elections. That's close to criminal," Biden said, adding that Zuckerberg must have known about Russia's influence campaign on Facebook before the CEO says he did.
Biden made the comments after being asked about a letter he sent to Facebook in October requesting that they remove a Trump campaign ad that falsely said that Biden offered Ukraine $1 billion in exchange for the removal of the country's top prosecutor.
He slammed Facebook for "propagating falsehoods they know to be false" by allowing politicians to make untrue statements in advertisements. And he argued for immediately revoking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which allows online platforms to escape most liability for content their users post.
"I've never been a fan of Facebook," Biden told The Times. "I've never been a big Zuckerberg fan. I think he's a real problem ... He knows better."
Read Biden's full interview with The New York Times editorial board here.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), in an interview with Willamette Week, suggested that Mark Zuckerberg should face a prison term for lying to American citizens about Facebook’s privacy lapses.
“Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy,” Senator Wyden said in the interview. “I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to — and let me underline this — the possibility of a prison term. Because he hurt a lot of people. And, by the way, there is a precedent for this: In financial services, if the CEO and the executives lie about the financials, they can be held personally accountable.”
An editor’s note from Willamette Week cited a professor from the University of Oregon, Tim Gleason, who said “the likelihood of criminal action is rather slim.” Zuckerberg has dodged shareholder questions about whether he would be willing to step down as Facebook CEO or chairman.
Senator Wyden introduced a bill in 2018, the Consumer Data Protection Act, that would give the FTC power to crack down harder on companies who violate consumer privacy. The bill says executives could face up to 20 years in prison and up to a $5 million personal fine.
In July, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion, the largest ever imposed by the FTC against a tech company, after it started probing the company’s privacy practices in March 2018. The FTC focused on a massive data breach that gave Cambridge Analytics access to private data from 87 million Facebook users. Facebook, the FTC said, was supposed to tell users when their data was being used by third party firms.
The SEC also announced that Facebook will pay a $100 million fine for misleading investors about the risks it faced from the misuse of user data. “For more than two years, Facebook’s public disclosures presented the risk of misuse of user data as merely hypothetical when Facebook knew that a third-party developer had actually misused Facebook user data,” the SEC said in July.
“Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy,” Senator Wyden said in the interview. “I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to — and let me underline this — the possibility of a prison term. Because he hurt a lot of people. And, by the way, there is a precedent for this: In financial services, if the CEO and the executives lie about the financials, they can be held personally accountable.”
An editor’s note from Willamette Week cited a professor from the University of Oregon, Tim Gleason, who said “the likelihood of criminal action is rather slim.” Zuckerberg has dodged shareholder questions about whether he would be willing to step down as Facebook CEO or chairman.
Senator Wyden introduced a bill in 2018, the Consumer Data Protection Act, that would give the FTC power to crack down harder on companies who violate consumer privacy. The bill says executives could face up to 20 years in prison and up to a $5 million personal fine.
In July, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion, the largest ever imposed by the FTC against a tech company, after it started probing the company’s privacy practices in March 2018. The FTC focused on a massive data breach that gave Cambridge Analytics access to private data from 87 million Facebook users. Facebook, the FTC said, was supposed to tell users when their data was being used by third party firms.
The SEC also announced that Facebook will pay a $100 million fine for misleading investors about the risks it faced from the misuse of user data. “For more than two years, Facebook’s public disclosures presented the risk of misuse of user data as merely hypothetical when Facebook knew that a third-party developer had actually misused Facebook user data,” the SEC said in July.
DC Sues Zuckerberg Over Cambridge Analytica Privacy Breach
WASHINGTON (AP) — The District of Columbia on Monday sued Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to hold him personally liable for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a privacy breach of millions of Facebook users’ personal data that became a major corporate and political scandal.
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed the civil lawsuit against Zuckerberg in D.C. Superior Court. The lawsuit maintains that Zuckerberg directly participated in important company decisions and was aware of the potential dangers of sharing users’ data, such as occurred in the case involving data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica gathered details on as many as 87 million Facebook users without their permission. Their data is alleged to have been used to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.
Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook and has headed its board since 2012, controls more than 50% of Facebook’s voting shares and “maintains an unparalleled level of control over the operations of Facebook as it has grown into the largest social media company in the world,” the lawsuit says.
Racine is seeking damages and penalties from Zuckerberg as may be determined in a trial.
Meta Platforms spokesman Andy Stone declined to comment. Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is based in Menlo Park, California.
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed the civil lawsuit against Zuckerberg in D.C. Superior Court. The lawsuit maintains that Zuckerberg directly participated in important company decisions and was aware of the potential dangers of sharing users’ data, such as occurred in the case involving data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica gathered details on as many as 87 million Facebook users without their permission. Their data is alleged to have been used to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.
Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook and has headed its board since 2012, controls more than 50% of Facebook’s voting shares and “maintains an unparalleled level of control over the operations of Facebook as it has grown into the largest social media company in the world,” the lawsuit says.
Racine is seeking damages and penalties from Zuckerberg as may be determined in a trial.
Meta Platforms spokesman Andy Stone declined to comment. Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is based in Menlo Park, California.
Mark Zuckerberg was sued Monday by District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, who says the Facebook founder should be held financially responsible for the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The lawsuit was filed in DC Superior Court and demands that Zuckerberg pay civil penalties and restitution or damages.
"We're suing Mark Zuckerberg for his role in Facebook's misleading privacy practices and failure to protect millions of users' data," Racine wrote on Twitter. "Our investigation shows extensive evidence that Zuckerberg was personally involved in failures that led to the Cambridge Analytica incident. This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary. Misleading consumers, exposing their data, and violating the law come with consequences, not only for companies that breach that trust, but also corporate executives."
Racine's lawsuit says that "Facebook's 2010 decision to open up the Facebook Platform to third parties" was "the brainchild of Zuckerberg." This change let developers "access the massive trove of user data that Facebook had collected through the 'side door' of applications," the lawsuit said, continuing:
Zuckerberg had always been aware that the success of Facebook hinged on convincing users that their data was private enough, while selling as much access to those users as possible without driving them away. And Zuckerberg was fully aware that users would be concerned by this newly vulnerable position. So Zuckerberg engaged in a decade-long campaign designed to convince users that Facebook cared about and tried to protect users and their data. Behind closed doors however, Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook's policies be "as simple as we can get away with." Given that Facebook's platform was designed to allow abuse, Zuckerberg's company largely operated without proper safeguards in place to protect users: policy enforcement was lax, review of app violations was inconsistent or subjective, and the policies themselves were unclear and confusing.
Ultimately, the political consulting firm "Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook Platform—in a way that Facebook and Zuckerberg encouraged—to influence and manipulate the outcome of a United States presidential election," Racine's complaint said. Cambridge Analytica knew it could access user data "using Facebook's existing developer tools, an open secret that was well known to Facebook's business partners using the platform" and that "it could leverage Facebook's lax policy enforcement to continue manipulating the Facebook data it had amassed without fear Facebook would do anything about its operations. All the while, Facebook and Zuckerberg were trying to convince users in their user-facing statements that their data was safe," Racine alleged.
Zuckerberg "is personally involved in nearly every major decision the company makes" and was responsible for "Facebook's inconsistent actions regarding privacy, including deceptive trade practices, misrepresentations, and ambiguities that violate the CPPA [DC's Consumer Protection Procedures Act]," the AG alleged. The alleged violations include false representations to users about privacy on Facebook, the failure to inform users that personal information could be shared with third-party applications without their knowledge or affirmative consent, and "Facebook's failure to tell consumers for over two years that their personal information was improperly harvested and sold" to Cambridge Analytica.
The scandal came to light in March 2018, when, according to the complaint, "whistleblower Christopher Wylie publicly revealed that... Cambridge Analytica—a London-based electioneering firm—exfiltrated the personal data of more than 70 million Facebook users in the United States, including more than 340,000 District residents, in order to influence the results of the 2016 United States presidential election." Furthermore, "this data trove included Facebook users' ages, interests, pages they've liked, groups they belong to, physical locations, political affiliation, religious affiliation, relationships, and photos, as well as their full names, phone numbers, and email addresses."
Facebook knew in December 2015 that researcher and app developer Aleksandr Kogan "had sold Facebook consumer data to Cambridge Analytica," a violation of Facebook's platform policy, the complaint said. (Kogan and former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019.)
As noted in Racine's complaint, Cambridge Analytica used the data to target political ads and "received millions of dollars from the Ted Cruz presidential nomination campaign and later the Donald Trump presidential campaigns to provide digital advertising services during the 2016 Election."
Kogan's app "identified itself as a personality study for research purposes," and it was allowed on the platform even though "the app itself contained terms that directly contradicted the Platform Policy," which prohibited the transfer and sale of consumer data, the complaint said. Kogan launched the app on Facebook in November 2013.
Facebook terminated the app's access to the Facebook Platform in December 2015 but "did not ban, suspend, or limit the privileges of Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, or any of their affiliates," the lawsuit said. Facebook also did not conduct an audit of Kogan or Cambridge Analytica "or take any other enforcement or remedial action to determine whether the Facebook consumer data that was harvested by the App had been accounted for, deleted, and protected from further use and sharing," the lawsuit said.
"Instead, Facebook simply requested that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica delete all data that they received through the Facebook Platform and accepted their word that they had done so," the complaint said, adding that Facebook did not disclose to users "that their personal information may have been harvested and sold to Cambridge Analytica" until April 2018.
"Zuckerberg was personally aware of the risks that sharing consumer data with apps posed, but actively disregarded those risks because sharing data was otherwise beneficial and lucrative to Facebook's business model and Platform growth," the complaint said. It cited an email from October 2012 in which Zuckerberg wrote, "I think we leak info to developers, but I just can't think of any instances where that data has leaked from developer to developer and caused a real issue for us."
Zuckerberg "mak[es] day-to-day decisions about minute details of the Platform's operations, including specific policy changes and enforcement decisions," and, "contrary to his public statements, Zuckerberg was intent on finding a way of leveraging Platform changes to amass more data—and accordingly more money—for Facebook," the complaint said.
The "most troubling" fact, according to the complaint, "is that Facebook looked into Cambridge Analytica and determined that it posed a risk to consumer data but chose to bury those concerns rather than stop them, as that could have hurt Facebook's (and Zuckerberg's) bottom line."
Facebook owner Meta did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
This is not Racine's first attempt to sue Zuckerberg, but his previous "efforts have run into obstacles in court," a Washington Post article said. "Last year, he attempted to add Zuckerberg as a defendant in his ongoing Cambridge Analytica lawsuit, but a judge in March rejected the effort, saying Racine had waited too long to add the embattled CEO to the lawsuit. Racine's office said this new lawsuit is based on hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that his staff did not have access to until litigation during the Cambridge Analytica suit, including depositions of Facebook employees and other whistleblowers."
"We're suing Mark Zuckerberg for his role in Facebook's misleading privacy practices and failure to protect millions of users' data," Racine wrote on Twitter. "Our investigation shows extensive evidence that Zuckerberg was personally involved in failures that led to the Cambridge Analytica incident. This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary. Misleading consumers, exposing their data, and violating the law come with consequences, not only for companies that breach that trust, but also corporate executives."
Racine's lawsuit says that "Facebook's 2010 decision to open up the Facebook Platform to third parties" was "the brainchild of Zuckerberg." This change let developers "access the massive trove of user data that Facebook had collected through the 'side door' of applications," the lawsuit said, continuing:
Zuckerberg had always been aware that the success of Facebook hinged on convincing users that their data was private enough, while selling as much access to those users as possible without driving them away. And Zuckerberg was fully aware that users would be concerned by this newly vulnerable position. So Zuckerberg engaged in a decade-long campaign designed to convince users that Facebook cared about and tried to protect users and their data. Behind closed doors however, Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook's policies be "as simple as we can get away with." Given that Facebook's platform was designed to allow abuse, Zuckerberg's company largely operated without proper safeguards in place to protect users: policy enforcement was lax, review of app violations was inconsistent or subjective, and the policies themselves were unclear and confusing.
Ultimately, the political consulting firm "Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook Platform—in a way that Facebook and Zuckerberg encouraged—to influence and manipulate the outcome of a United States presidential election," Racine's complaint said. Cambridge Analytica knew it could access user data "using Facebook's existing developer tools, an open secret that was well known to Facebook's business partners using the platform" and that "it could leverage Facebook's lax policy enforcement to continue manipulating the Facebook data it had amassed without fear Facebook would do anything about its operations. All the while, Facebook and Zuckerberg were trying to convince users in their user-facing statements that their data was safe," Racine alleged.
Zuckerberg "is personally involved in nearly every major decision the company makes" and was responsible for "Facebook's inconsistent actions regarding privacy, including deceptive trade practices, misrepresentations, and ambiguities that violate the CPPA [DC's Consumer Protection Procedures Act]," the AG alleged. The alleged violations include false representations to users about privacy on Facebook, the failure to inform users that personal information could be shared with third-party applications without their knowledge or affirmative consent, and "Facebook's failure to tell consumers for over two years that their personal information was improperly harvested and sold" to Cambridge Analytica.
The scandal came to light in March 2018, when, according to the complaint, "whistleblower Christopher Wylie publicly revealed that... Cambridge Analytica—a London-based electioneering firm—exfiltrated the personal data of more than 70 million Facebook users in the United States, including more than 340,000 District residents, in order to influence the results of the 2016 United States presidential election." Furthermore, "this data trove included Facebook users' ages, interests, pages they've liked, groups they belong to, physical locations, political affiliation, religious affiliation, relationships, and photos, as well as their full names, phone numbers, and email addresses."
Facebook knew in December 2015 that researcher and app developer Aleksandr Kogan "had sold Facebook consumer data to Cambridge Analytica," a violation of Facebook's platform policy, the complaint said. (Kogan and former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019.)
As noted in Racine's complaint, Cambridge Analytica used the data to target political ads and "received millions of dollars from the Ted Cruz presidential nomination campaign and later the Donald Trump presidential campaigns to provide digital advertising services during the 2016 Election."
Kogan's app "identified itself as a personality study for research purposes," and it was allowed on the platform even though "the app itself contained terms that directly contradicted the Platform Policy," which prohibited the transfer and sale of consumer data, the complaint said. Kogan launched the app on Facebook in November 2013.
Facebook terminated the app's access to the Facebook Platform in December 2015 but "did not ban, suspend, or limit the privileges of Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, or any of their affiliates," the lawsuit said. Facebook also did not conduct an audit of Kogan or Cambridge Analytica "or take any other enforcement or remedial action to determine whether the Facebook consumer data that was harvested by the App had been accounted for, deleted, and protected from further use and sharing," the lawsuit said.
"Instead, Facebook simply requested that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica delete all data that they received through the Facebook Platform and accepted their word that they had done so," the complaint said, adding that Facebook did not disclose to users "that their personal information may have been harvested and sold to Cambridge Analytica" until April 2018.
"Zuckerberg was personally aware of the risks that sharing consumer data with apps posed, but actively disregarded those risks because sharing data was otherwise beneficial and lucrative to Facebook's business model and Platform growth," the complaint said. It cited an email from October 2012 in which Zuckerberg wrote, "I think we leak info to developers, but I just can't think of any instances where that data has leaked from developer to developer and caused a real issue for us."
Zuckerberg "mak[es] day-to-day decisions about minute details of the Platform's operations, including specific policy changes and enforcement decisions," and, "contrary to his public statements, Zuckerberg was intent on finding a way of leveraging Platform changes to amass more data—and accordingly more money—for Facebook," the complaint said.
The "most troubling" fact, according to the complaint, "is that Facebook looked into Cambridge Analytica and determined that it posed a risk to consumer data but chose to bury those concerns rather than stop them, as that could have hurt Facebook's (and Zuckerberg's) bottom line."
Facebook owner Meta did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
This is not Racine's first attempt to sue Zuckerberg, but his previous "efforts have run into obstacles in court," a Washington Post article said. "Last year, he attempted to add Zuckerberg as a defendant in his ongoing Cambridge Analytica lawsuit, but a judge in March rejected the effort, saying Racine had waited too long to add the embattled CEO to the lawsuit. Racine's office said this new lawsuit is based on hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that his staff did not have access to until litigation during the Cambridge Analytica suit, including depositions of Facebook employees and other whistleblowers."
"Facebook's suppression of the Post article--and allegations of Biden family corruption highly relevant to the 2020 presidential election--following guidance from the FBI is highly troubling "the House Republicans wrote.
