Meta Cambridge Analytica
Facebook / Meta's Cambridge Analytica is Mark Zuckerberg's Achilles Heel
These domain names will be used to promote the book “Careless People”which is a scathing memoir about the despicable actions of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Meta, formerly Facebook, and the inappropriate and potentially illegal behavior to affiliate Meta with China.
“A cautionary tale of power, greed and lost idealism”.
aCarelessPeople.com
MetaQuestHeadsets.com
MetaQuestMetaverse.com
MetaPlatformsAI.com
HorizonMetaverse.com
MetaWhistleblowers.com
FacebookWhistleblowers.com
MetaChildAbuse.com
FacebookChildAbuse.com
MetaPedophiles.com
FacebookPedophiles.com
MetaHumanTrafficking.com
FacebookHumanTrafficking.com
RealityLabsMetaverse.com
RealityLabsWearables.com
RealityMetaverse.com
VirtualRealityMetaverse.com
MetaCambridgeAnalytica.com
FacebookCambridgeAnalytica.com
CambridgeAnalyticaLawsuit.com
CambridgeAnalyticaScandal.com
GoogleWhistleblowers.com
AppleMonopoly.com
ElderAbuseAct.com
ElderFinancialAbuseAct.com
“A cautionary tale of power, greed and lost idealism”.
aCarelessPeople.com
MetaQuestHeadsets.com
MetaQuestMetaverse.com
MetaPlatformsAI.com
HorizonMetaverse.com
MetaWhistleblowers.com
FacebookWhistleblowers.com
MetaChildAbuse.com
FacebookChildAbuse.com
MetaPedophiles.com
FacebookPedophiles.com
MetaHumanTrafficking.com
FacebookHumanTrafficking.com
RealityLabsMetaverse.com
RealityLabsWearables.com
RealityMetaverse.com
VirtualRealityMetaverse.com
MetaCambridgeAnalytica.com
FacebookCambridgeAnalytica.com
CambridgeAnalyticaLawsuit.com
CambridgeAnalyticaScandal.com
GoogleWhistleblowers.com
AppleMonopoly.com
ElderAbuseAct.com
ElderFinancialAbuseAct.com
A woman who formerly worked for Meta / Facebook’s ex-operations chief Sheryl Sandberg, claims she was tasked with drafting “Talking Points” for her boss while she was in labor with her first child.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of the explosive memoir about her six year tenure at the company that was then known as Facebook.
You can purchase this book from Barnes and Noble or Amazon for example, it is a must read and you will find out a great deal how Mark Zuckerberg treats his employees and how his illegal behavior has inflicted severe harm and pain against this website owner while committing numerous felonies for which he should be incarcerated in prison.
Careless People goes a long way in showing how much criminal behavior he has committed for many years and anyone who wants to learn more about his unethical and dangerous unlawful conduct is ongoing and he should be held accountable for his many crimes.
A former Facebook executive is making waves with a new memoir about the company's current and former leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg — including surprising anecdotes that are being dismissed by Meta as "false and defamatory."
And then there’s what Joel Kaplan, currently Meta’s chief global affairs officer, allegedly did to Wynn-Williams at a boozy corporate shindig in 2017. She claimed that he called her “sultry” and rubbed his body against hers on the dancefloor. This wasn’t a one-off incident, she claims: indeed, there was a group at Facebook called Feminist Fight Club, whose members compared notes on such reportedly prevalent cases of sexual harassment by execs. An internal investigation cleared Kaplan of impropriety and soon after Wynn-Williams was fired for making misleading harassment allegations.
Wynn-Williams also claims in her book that Sandberg asked her assistant to buy lingerie for them both, which allegedly totaled $13,000.
The younger employee allegedly told Wynn-Williams that, according to the book, she was “very conscious of the benefits of being Sheryl’s ‘little doll,’ as she calls it and having Sheryl tell her she loves her.”
Wynn-Williams continues: “She’s the one who explained to me the benefits of ‘being on the pedestal”.
A spokesman for Sandberg declined to comment on the book.
But another source who worked at Facebook at the same time as Wynn-Williams and Sandberg, and who was present for some of the anecdotes recounted in Careless People, tells PEOPLE that Wynn-Williams' depiction of events is so distorted as to be "laughable.”
The company also immediately pushed back on Wynn-Williams’ account, which was published by Flatiron Books on Tuesday, March 11.
This book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a company spokesperson tells PEOPLE in a statement.
“Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment," the spokesperson went on to say. "Since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books.”
For Wynn-Williams, writing the book was a way — in her view — to expose how Facebook leaders, like Sandberg and CEO/founder Zuckerberg, and company-wide issues led to her disillusionment of the highly influential social media platform.
For example, in Careless People, Wynn-Williams recounts what she describes as the shocking lengths Zuckerberg took to get Facebook into the Chinese market, and the widespread effects of hate speech on the platform.
The Meta spokesperson says they are pursuing "immediate legal action due to the false and defamatory nature of the allegations" in Wynn-Williams' book. The spokesperson did not provide more details.
For Wynn-Williams, working at Facebook came at great personal cost, especially when she was pregnant, she writes.
She remembers drafting talking points for Sandberg while she was in the hospital about to give birth, and traveling internationally while pregnant.
"Looking back, I still can’t quite believe it. I’m ashamed," she writes. "And I can’t blame this entirely on Facebook. I’ve been this kind of driven person my whole life. I don’t like to let people down. But it’s also true that at Facebook, I didn’t feel like I had a choice."
It was during one of the trips abroad that, Wynn-Williams writes, she witnessed Sandberg sleeping next to her assistant — and was later asked by the COO herself to join Sandberg in bed, Wynn-Williams claims.
According to Careless People, Sandberg asked Wynn-Williams to “come to bed” twice on a private jet where there was only one bed during a long flight back to the U.S. Wynn-Williams refused.
However, the source who worked with them both at Meta and was present during international travel as well says that Wynn-Williams is misconstruing what may have happened.
This source says that while they can't remember the specifics — given how long ago it was — it was much more likely that Sandberg was merely trying to get Wynn-Williams to take some rest in the limited sleeping quarters available on the plane.
But for Wynn-Williams, these interactions stood in stark contrast to the values of Sandberg’s 2013 bestseller. Lean In outlines the ways women can gain power in the workplace and at home – and speak out against sexual harassment and uncomfortable workplace dynamics.
During her maternity leave, Wynn-Williams also struggled to navigate new motherhood and the expectations of her job, especially during her interactions with Joel Kaplan, according to her book.
Kaplan, the vice president of U.S. policy, who once dated Sandberg, was Wynn-Williams’ then-manager.
In her memoir, Wynn-Williams writes how Kaplan made her uneasy following the birth of her second child: He insisted they video conference during her maternity leave, according to the book. And when she had complications after delivery, requiring her to have surgery, he pressed her, “But where are you bleeding from?”
Most days, working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli,” Wynn-Williams writes in Careless People, “and way more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them."
Careless People is on sale now.
In Careless People, published this week, Sarah Wynn-Williams claims Sandberg, the company’s former chief operating officer, who built her brand in part on female empowerment with her book Lean In, had an intimate connection with her 26-year-old assistant that involved sleeping on each other during a business trip and wearing expensive lingerie that Sandberg allegedly asked her to purchase.
They had “taken turns sleeping in each other’s laps, occasionally stroking each other’s hair,” writes Wynn-Williams, who worked for Facebook (now known as Meta) for seven years as the director of global public policy, “while I tried to make myself as small and invisible as possible, feeling uncomfortable with what I was seeing.”
March 12th Reuters Meta Platforms
Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg fabricated a claim that she was planning to take an Asiana Airlines flight that ended up crash-landing in San Francisco more than a decade ago, killing 3 and injuring nearly 200, according to one of her ex-subordinates.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked under Sandberg for six years as director of public policy when the company was known as Facebook, alleged in her new memoir that CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s former No. 2 “lie[d] about narrowly missing” Asiana Airlines Flight 214.
“People don’t lie about narrowly missing plane crashes, do they?” Wynn-Williams wrote in her memoir titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
In Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams claims Sheryl Sandberg had an intimate connection with her 26-year-old assistant during her time at Facebook.
For Wynn-Williams, working at Facebook came at great personal cost, especially when she was pregnant, she writes.
On Wednesday won an emergency arbitration ruling to temporarily stop promotion of the tell-all book "Careless People" by a former employee, according to a copy of the ruling published by the social media company.
The book by Meta's former director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams, was called by the New York Times book review "an ugly, detailed portrait of one of the most powerful companies in the world," and its leading executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan.
Meta will suffer "immediate and irreparable loss" in the absence of an emergency relief, the American Arbitration Association's emergency arbitrator, Nicholas Gowen, said in a ruling after a hearing, which Wynn-Williams did not attend.
Book publisher Macmillan attended and argued it was not bound by the arbitration agreement, which was part of a severance agreement between the employee and company.
The ruling says that Wynn-Williams should stop promoting the book and, to the extent she could, stop further publication. It did not order any action by the publisher.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a post on Threads: "This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams' false and defamatory book should never have been published.".
Wynn-Williams and Macmillan did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the ruling.Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Michael Perry
An explosive insider account charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Meta, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
Overview
An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.”
Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.
If Douglas Coupland’s 1995 novel about young tech workers, Microserfs, were a dystopian tragedy, it might read something like Careless People. The author narrates, in a fizzy historic present, her youthful idealism when she arrives at Facebook ((now Meta) to work on global affairs in 2011, after a stint as an ambassador for New Zealand.
Some years later she finds a female agency worker having a seizure on the office floor, surrounded by bosses who are ignoring her. The scales falling from her eyes become a blizzard. These people, she decides, just “didn’t give a fuck”
Mark Zuckerberg’s firstMmeeting with a head of state was with the Russian prime minister,Dmitry Medvedev, in 2012. He was sweaty and nervous, but slowly he acquires a taste for the limelight.
He asks (unsuccessfully) to be sat next to Fidel Castro at a dinner. In 2015 he asks Xi Jinping if he’ll “do him the honor of naming his unborn child”. (Xi refuses.) He’s friendly with Barack Obama, until the latter gives him a dressing-down about fake news.
In 2016, Facebook embeds staff in Donald Trump’s campaign “alongside Trump campaign programmers, ad copywriters, media buyers, network engineers, and data scientists”, helping him win. This inspires Zuckerberg to consider running for president himself, and he tours US swing states in 2017. Wynn-Williams describes his speeches as sounding “like what a kid thinks a president sounds like”. One goes: “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, act anew.” Zuckerberg calls politicians unfriendly to Facebook adversaries and instructs his team to apply pressure to ‘pull them over to our side’Meanwhile, in an effort to do business in China, his company has been offering the Chinese Communist party a “white-glove service”, and a genocide has occurred in Myanmar following a flood of false anti-Muslim stories posted on Facebook. In time Facebook abandons its idea to give developing countries free access to the internet, or at least Facebook, pivots to the “metaverse”, a bad virtual-reality game populated by people who for a long time did not have legs, and finally pivots again to AI.
Zuckerberg, in short, turns out to be a giant man-baby suffering from a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people overestimate their own cognitive abilities. His colleagues obsequiously let him win at board games. He calls politicians unfriendly to Facebook “adversaries” and instructs his team to apply pressure to “pull them over to our side”. He blames his assistants when he forgets his own passport.
Floating through the book like a toxic ice queen, meanwhile, is Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg.
Wynn-Williams isn’t buying her “Lean In” talk. In one of two remarkable body-horror interludes in the book (the first is when she is almost eaten by a shark as a child), Wynn-Williams nearly dies in childbirth, but she is still harassed for work updates during her recovery. When she returns to the office her male boss gives her an unflattering performance review. “You weren’t responsive enough,” he says. “In my defense,” she replies, “I was in a coma for some of it.”
This sounds like a job for a famous champion of women in the workplace. “Friends who have fallen for Sheryl’s Lean In schtick,” Wynn-Williams writes, “earnestly recommend going to her with my concerns.” But she is not convinced. She has already been sent to a Zika hotspot while heavily pregnant, and to Japan while pregnant again, to help promote Sandberg’s book.
Wynn-Williams left Facebook in 2018 to work on “unofficial negotiations between the US and China on AI weapons”. Has the company’s office culture improved since then? A clue might be Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He complains that corporate culture has become too “neutered” and needs a new injection of “masculine energy”. In February, he visited the White House to talk to Donald Trump about AI.
Editor’s note: since this review was written Meta has responded to Wynn-Williams’ book, calling it “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of the explosive memoir about her six year tenure at the company that was then known as Facebook.
You can purchase this book from Barnes and Noble or Amazon for example, it is a must read and you will find out a great deal how Mark Zuckerberg treats his employees and how his illegal behavior has inflicted severe harm and pain against this website owner while committing numerous felonies for which he should be incarcerated in prison.
Careless People goes a long way in showing how much criminal behavior he has committed for many years and anyone who wants to learn more about his unethical and dangerous unlawful conduct is ongoing and he should be held accountable for his many crimes.
A former Facebook executive is making waves with a new memoir about the company's current and former leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg — including surprising anecdotes that are being dismissed by Meta as "false and defamatory."
And then there’s what Joel Kaplan, currently Meta’s chief global affairs officer, allegedly did to Wynn-Williams at a boozy corporate shindig in 2017. She claimed that he called her “sultry” and rubbed his body against hers on the dancefloor. This wasn’t a one-off incident, she claims: indeed, there was a group at Facebook called Feminist Fight Club, whose members compared notes on such reportedly prevalent cases of sexual harassment by execs. An internal investigation cleared Kaplan of impropriety and soon after Wynn-Williams was fired for making misleading harassment allegations.
Wynn-Williams also claims in her book that Sandberg asked her assistant to buy lingerie for them both, which allegedly totaled $13,000.
The younger employee allegedly told Wynn-Williams that, according to the book, she was “very conscious of the benefits of being Sheryl’s ‘little doll,’ as she calls it and having Sheryl tell her she loves her.”
Wynn-Williams continues: “She’s the one who explained to me the benefits of ‘being on the pedestal”.
A spokesman for Sandberg declined to comment on the book.
But another source who worked at Facebook at the same time as Wynn-Williams and Sandberg, and who was present for some of the anecdotes recounted in Careless People, tells PEOPLE that Wynn-Williams' depiction of events is so distorted as to be "laughable.”
The company also immediately pushed back on Wynn-Williams’ account, which was published by Flatiron Books on Tuesday, March 11.
This book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a company spokesperson tells PEOPLE in a statement.
“Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment," the spokesperson went on to say. "Since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books.”
For Wynn-Williams, writing the book was a way — in her view — to expose how Facebook leaders, like Sandberg and CEO/founder Zuckerberg, and company-wide issues led to her disillusionment of the highly influential social media platform.
For example, in Careless People, Wynn-Williams recounts what she describes as the shocking lengths Zuckerberg took to get Facebook into the Chinese market, and the widespread effects of hate speech on the platform.
The Meta spokesperson says they are pursuing "immediate legal action due to the false and defamatory nature of the allegations" in Wynn-Williams' book. The spokesperson did not provide more details.
For Wynn-Williams, working at Facebook came at great personal cost, especially when she was pregnant, she writes.
She remembers drafting talking points for Sandberg while she was in the hospital about to give birth, and traveling internationally while pregnant.
"Looking back, I still can’t quite believe it. I’m ashamed," she writes. "And I can’t blame this entirely on Facebook. I’ve been this kind of driven person my whole life. I don’t like to let people down. But it’s also true that at Facebook, I didn’t feel like I had a choice."
It was during one of the trips abroad that, Wynn-Williams writes, she witnessed Sandberg sleeping next to her assistant — and was later asked by the COO herself to join Sandberg in bed, Wynn-Williams claims.
According to Careless People, Sandberg asked Wynn-Williams to “come to bed” twice on a private jet where there was only one bed during a long flight back to the U.S. Wynn-Williams refused.
However, the source who worked with them both at Meta and was present during international travel as well says that Wynn-Williams is misconstruing what may have happened.
This source says that while they can't remember the specifics — given how long ago it was — it was much more likely that Sandberg was merely trying to get Wynn-Williams to take some rest in the limited sleeping quarters available on the plane.
But for Wynn-Williams, these interactions stood in stark contrast to the values of Sandberg’s 2013 bestseller. Lean In outlines the ways women can gain power in the workplace and at home – and speak out against sexual harassment and uncomfortable workplace dynamics.
During her maternity leave, Wynn-Williams also struggled to navigate new motherhood and the expectations of her job, especially during her interactions with Joel Kaplan, according to her book.
Kaplan, the vice president of U.S. policy, who once dated Sandberg, was Wynn-Williams’ then-manager.
In her memoir, Wynn-Williams writes how Kaplan made her uneasy following the birth of her second child: He insisted they video conference during her maternity leave, according to the book. And when she had complications after delivery, requiring her to have surgery, he pressed her, “But where are you bleeding from?”
Most days, working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli,” Wynn-Williams writes in Careless People, “and way more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them."
Careless People is on sale now.
In Careless People, published this week, Sarah Wynn-Williams claims Sandberg, the company’s former chief operating officer, who built her brand in part on female empowerment with her book Lean In, had an intimate connection with her 26-year-old assistant that involved sleeping on each other during a business trip and wearing expensive lingerie that Sandberg allegedly asked her to purchase.
They had “taken turns sleeping in each other’s laps, occasionally stroking each other’s hair,” writes Wynn-Williams, who worked for Facebook (now known as Meta) for seven years as the director of global public policy, “while I tried to make myself as small and invisible as possible, feeling uncomfortable with what I was seeing.”
March 12th Reuters Meta Platforms
Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg fabricated a claim that she was planning to take an Asiana Airlines flight that ended up crash-landing in San Francisco more than a decade ago, killing 3 and injuring nearly 200, according to one of her ex-subordinates.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked under Sandberg for six years as director of public policy when the company was known as Facebook, alleged in her new memoir that CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s former No. 2 “lie[d] about narrowly missing” Asiana Airlines Flight 214.
“People don’t lie about narrowly missing plane crashes, do they?” Wynn-Williams wrote in her memoir titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
In Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams claims Sheryl Sandberg had an intimate connection with her 26-year-old assistant during her time at Facebook.
For Wynn-Williams, working at Facebook came at great personal cost, especially when she was pregnant, she writes.
On Wednesday won an emergency arbitration ruling to temporarily stop promotion of the tell-all book "Careless People" by a former employee, according to a copy of the ruling published by the social media company.
The book by Meta's former director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams, was called by the New York Times book review "an ugly, detailed portrait of one of the most powerful companies in the world," and its leading executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan.
Meta will suffer "immediate and irreparable loss" in the absence of an emergency relief, the American Arbitration Association's emergency arbitrator, Nicholas Gowen, said in a ruling after a hearing, which Wynn-Williams did not attend.
Book publisher Macmillan attended and argued it was not bound by the arbitration agreement, which was part of a severance agreement between the employee and company.
The ruling says that Wynn-Williams should stop promoting the book and, to the extent she could, stop further publication. It did not order any action by the publisher.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a post on Threads: "This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams' false and defamatory book should never have been published.".
Wynn-Williams and Macmillan did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the ruling.Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Michael Perry
An explosive insider account charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Meta, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
Overview
An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.”
Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.
If Douglas Coupland’s 1995 novel about young tech workers, Microserfs, were a dystopian tragedy, it might read something like Careless People. The author narrates, in a fizzy historic present, her youthful idealism when she arrives at Facebook ((now Meta) to work on global affairs in 2011, after a stint as an ambassador for New Zealand.
Some years later she finds a female agency worker having a seizure on the office floor, surrounded by bosses who are ignoring her. The scales falling from her eyes become a blizzard. These people, she decides, just “didn’t give a fuck”
Mark Zuckerberg’s firstMmeeting with a head of state was with the Russian prime minister,Dmitry Medvedev, in 2012. He was sweaty and nervous, but slowly he acquires a taste for the limelight.
He asks (unsuccessfully) to be sat next to Fidel Castro at a dinner. In 2015 he asks Xi Jinping if he’ll “do him the honor of naming his unborn child”. (Xi refuses.) He’s friendly with Barack Obama, until the latter gives him a dressing-down about fake news.
In 2016, Facebook embeds staff in Donald Trump’s campaign “alongside Trump campaign programmers, ad copywriters, media buyers, network engineers, and data scientists”, helping him win. This inspires Zuckerberg to consider running for president himself, and he tours US swing states in 2017. Wynn-Williams describes his speeches as sounding “like what a kid thinks a president sounds like”. One goes: “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, act anew.” Zuckerberg calls politicians unfriendly to Facebook adversaries and instructs his team to apply pressure to ‘pull them over to our side’Meanwhile, in an effort to do business in China, his company has been offering the Chinese Communist party a “white-glove service”, and a genocide has occurred in Myanmar following a flood of false anti-Muslim stories posted on Facebook. In time Facebook abandons its idea to give developing countries free access to the internet, or at least Facebook, pivots to the “metaverse”, a bad virtual-reality game populated by people who for a long time did not have legs, and finally pivots again to AI.
Zuckerberg, in short, turns out to be a giant man-baby suffering from a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people overestimate their own cognitive abilities. His colleagues obsequiously let him win at board games. He calls politicians unfriendly to Facebook “adversaries” and instructs his team to apply pressure to “pull them over to our side”. He blames his assistants when he forgets his own passport.
Floating through the book like a toxic ice queen, meanwhile, is Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg.
Wynn-Williams isn’t buying her “Lean In” talk. In one of two remarkable body-horror interludes in the book (the first is when she is almost eaten by a shark as a child), Wynn-Williams nearly dies in childbirth, but she is still harassed for work updates during her recovery. When she returns to the office her male boss gives her an unflattering performance review. “You weren’t responsive enough,” he says. “In my defense,” she replies, “I was in a coma for some of it.”
This sounds like a job for a famous champion of women in the workplace. “Friends who have fallen for Sheryl’s Lean In schtick,” Wynn-Williams writes, “earnestly recommend going to her with my concerns.” But she is not convinced. She has already been sent to a Zika hotspot while heavily pregnant, and to Japan while pregnant again, to help promote Sandberg’s book.
Wynn-Williams left Facebook in 2018 to work on “unofficial negotiations between the US and China on AI weapons”. Has the company’s office culture improved since then? A clue might be Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He complains that corporate culture has become too “neutered” and needs a new injection of “masculine energy”. In February, he visited the White House to talk to Donald Trump about AI.
Editor’s note: since this review was written Meta has responded to Wynn-Williams’ book, calling it “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”.
- Donald Trump, the 47th President of the United States has filed this lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc. for violating his First Amendment rights by Censoring his Freedom of Speech Mark Zuckerberg has committed numerous felonies for which he should be arrested, charged and convicted, then he should be sentenced to several years in prison. President Trump has stated emphatically that Mark Zuckerberg should be imprisoned!
ElderAbuseAct.com
ElderFinancialAbuseAct.com
CambridgeAnalyticaLawsuit.com
FacebookCambridgeAnalytica.com
FacebookWhistleblowers.com
HorizonMetaverse.com
MetaCambridgeAnalytica.com
MetaQuestHeadsets.com
MetaQuestMetaverse.com
RealityLabsMetaverse.com
RealityMetaverse.com
VirtualRealityMetaverse.com
Mark Zuckerberg has committed several felonies, Criminal Conspiracy, Conversion, Elder Financial Abuse, Embezzlement, Fraud, Identity Fraud, and the RICO statute among others and along with Sheryl Sandberg, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, Sundar Pichai, Ruth Porat, Robert Parsons and Aman Bhutani need to be investigated and tried for their crimes and to be incarcerated in federal prison or county jail depending on which crimes they are convicted of which could be several be it by the state of California or Arizona and/or by the United States Department of Justice, whichever jurisdiction has the highest level and the penalties could consist of as much as 20 years in prison or a life sentence and if convicted of specific offenses one or more could even face deportation if not a U.S. citizen.
Not all of these crimes were committed by everyone listed here but all of the individuals listed here are guilty of some of these crimes and the website ElderAbuseAct.com has a more extensive history of each of them and a couple of them also committed Grand Theft and Receiving Stolen Property.
ElderAbuseAct.com is a repository of information regarding the Elder Abuse and Criminal Conspiracy conducted by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, his executive team at Meta Platforms Inc. along with the founder and former CEO of Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, and the current CEO of Amazon.com Andy Jassy, and several of their executive staff along with the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai, along with Ruth Porst, Philip Schindler, Thomas Kurian, Kent Walker, Lorraine Twohill, Peter Osterich and Sergey Brin also Robert Parsons, the founder and former CEO of GoDaddy and the current CEO of GoDaddy Aman Bhutani, and several of their executives including Blake Irving, Scott Wagner and Ray Winborne among others towards the owner of this elder abuse act website.
The focus of this website is to identify the perpetrators to the public of numerous State and Federal crimes against this elder and expose the various criminal acts they have committed, so that the specific governmental agencies and authorities will be notified and begin investigating, and eventually prosecute those responsible and after conviction, sentence the guilty to the incarceration in either jail or prison, whichever is most appropriate, thereby using their punishments as a deterrent for others to realize that crime does not pay, and prove to the public once and for all that no one is above the law and “if you can’t do the time, then don’t do the crime”.
US Supreme Court tosses case involving securities fraud suit against Facebook
By John Kruzel
November 22, 20249:13 AM PST
WASHINGTON, Nov 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Courtsidestepped on Friday a decision on whether to allow shareholders to proceed with a securities fraud lawsuit accusing
Facebook of misleading investors about the misuse of the social media platform's user data.
The justices, who heard arguments in the case on Nov. 6, dismissed Facebook's appeal of a lower court's ruling that allowed a 2018 class action led by Amalgamated Bank
to proceed. The Supreme Court opted not to resolve the underlying legal dispute, determining that the case should not have been taken up. Its action leaves the lower court's decision in place.
The court's dismissal came in a one-line order that provided no explanation.
The Facebook dispute was one of two cases to come before the Supreme Court this month involving the right of private litigants to hold companies to account for alleged securities fraud. The other one, involving the artificial intelligence chipmaker
was argued on Nov. 13. The Supreme Court has not ruled yet in the Nvidia case.
The plaintiffs in the Facebook case claimed the company unlawfully withheld information from investors about a 2015 data breach involving British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica that affected more than 30 million Facebook users. They accused Facebook of misleading investors in violation of the Securities Exchange Act, a 1934 federal law that requires publicly traded companies to disclose their business risks.
Facebook's stock fell following 2018 media reports that Cambridge Analytica had used improperly harvested Facebook user data in connection with Donald Trump'ssuccessful U.S. presidential campaign in 2016. The investors have sought unspecified monetary damages in part to recoup the lost value of the Facebook stock they held.
At issue was whether Facebook broke the law when it failed to detail the prior data breach in subsequent business-risk disclosures, and instead portrayed the risk of such incidents as purely hypothetical.
Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone expressed disappointment "in the Supreme Court's decision not to clarify this part of the law."
"The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the district court," Stone said.
Facebook argued that it was not required to reveal that its warned-of risk had already materialized because "a reasonable investor" would understand risk disclosures to be forward-looking statements.
President Joe Biden's administration supported the shareholders in the case.
U.S. District Judge Edward Davila dismissed the lawsuit but the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived it, prompting Facebook's appeal to the Supreme Court.
George Washington University law professor Alan Morrison said that following the Supreme Court's dismissal of Facebook's appeal, the plaintiffs would be expected to seek discovery, a process that involves the exchange of information among parties in a case. Morrison added that Facebook "might renew their motion to dismiss under a somewhat different standard - partially for purposes of delay."
The Cambridge Analytica data breach prompted U.S. government investigations into Facebook's privacy practices, various lawsuits and a U.S. congressional hearing. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2019 brought an enforcement action against Facebook over the matter, which the company settled for $100 million. Facebook paid a separate $5 billion penalty to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the issue.
The Supreme Court in prior rulings has limited the authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency that polices securities fraud.
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 - [email protected] - (415) 5224051 - [email protected]
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
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
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.
