Facebook reportedly fined $5B over Cambridge Analytica fiasco
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reportedly approved a $5 billion settlement with Facebook to resolve the latter's privacy violations in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The FTC approved the settlement in a 3-to-2 vote with Republican commissioners in favor and Democrats opposing, according to Wall Street Journal sources. The arrangement and further details have yet to be confirmed publicly, and any agreement will still have to be reviewed by the Department of Justice.
Earlier this year Facebook set aside $3 billion in anticipation of FTC fines. The two parties have been in negotiations for months, looking to avoid a long and expensive court battle.
The FTC began investigating Facebook in March last year following the emergence of the scandal. Analytica and Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan used a quiz app to collect data on Facebook users and their connected friends, the latter without their consent, enabling Analytica to build voter profiles for some 71 million Americans and a smaller amount of people overseas. The data harvesting was discovered in 2015, but only made public by Facebook in March 2018. This drew the scrutiny of governments in both the U.S. and the UK.
Some clients of Analytica included the 2016 Presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party during Mexico's 2018 general election.
In fact, the FTC was concerned that various Facebook activities constituted violations of a 2011 agreement in which the company promised to improve its privacy standards. One of these was likely abuse of an Apple enterprise certificate for "Facebook Research," an app people were paid to install to monitor usage habits.
The FTC approved the settlement in a 3-to-2 vote with Republican commissioners in favor and Democrats opposing, according to Wall Street Journal sources. The arrangement and further details have yet to be confirmed publicly, and any agreement will still have to be reviewed by the Department of Justice.
Earlier this year Facebook set aside $3 billion in anticipation of FTC fines. The two parties have been in negotiations for months, looking to avoid a long and expensive court battle.
The FTC began investigating Facebook in March last year following the emergence of the scandal. Analytica and Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan used a quiz app to collect data on Facebook users and their connected friends, the latter without their consent, enabling Analytica to build voter profiles for some 71 million Americans and a smaller amount of people overseas. The data harvesting was discovered in 2015, but only made public by Facebook in March 2018. This drew the scrutiny of governments in both the U.S. and the UK.
Some clients of Analytica included the 2016 Presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party during Mexico's 2018 general election.
In fact, the FTC was concerned that various Facebook activities constituted violations of a 2011 agreement in which the company promised to improve its privacy standards. One of these was likely abuse of an Apple enterprise certificate for "Facebook Research," an app people were paid to install to monitor usage habits.
Comments
They should also start making the CEO's personally responsible for the fines. I can guarantee that things would change real quick.
The rest, like the made-up antitrust violations, are pure nonsense.
- fine too big
- fine too small
- there was no other ongoing punishment or action to change the operations
- they did it just to be partisan and vote against the republicans
- they're totally find with Facebook's lack of respect for people's privacy
- Mark Zuckerberg was a big campaign contributor.
i gues if not settled it would go to a court to decide.
They will say thank you and pay the 5 bills and hope no one else fines them.
But none of the conditions in the settlement will impose strict limitations on Facebook’s ability to collect and share data with third parties. And that decision appeared to help split the five-member commission. The 3-to-2 vote, taken in secret this week, drew the dissent of the two Democrats on the commission because they sought stricter limits on the company, the people said.
There were calls for Zuckerberg to be personally liable given his role at the company and because a similar settlement in 2011 did nothing to curb Facebook’s bad behavior. Especially with no additional oversight. Suck lied to members of Congress when he appeared before them. The first poster is right: the fine is a fraction of what it should be
It is now merely a cost of doing business.
My impression is that this level of fine will go down in their books more as “bummer, we hit a negative ROI on this one, let’s make sure next time we’re hiding our practices better”.