Goal agrees to agree to avoid going to trial in San Francisco Federal Court for allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access to private data of millions of its users. This is reflected in the communication presented last Friday in which the parties request the judge, Vince Chabria, to put the trial for the class action lawsuit on hold for 60 days until the lawyers of the two parties, and Facebook, reach an agreement. definitive in writing.
The lawsuit, which was filed four years ago, alleges that Facebook has violated consumer privacy laws by sharing users’ personal data with third parties, such as the now-defunct British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. It also points out that Cambridge Analytica developed a Facebook app called This is your digital life, which was downloaded 300,000 times and captured user data.
The app accessed data that described your friends, and it is likely that it has obtained personal information from more than 80 million users of the social network. Of course, Facebook has argued that its privacy practices are consistent with its practices, and that it does not support any legal claim. Apparently, this data would have been used during the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and in the campaign in favor of Brexit. They would also have been used by Russian disinformation groups.
Despite this, Meta has decided to agree to, among other things, prevent its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and its COO, Sheryl Sandberg (which will soon cease to be), have to testify in court at the hearing that was to be held on September 20. The economic terms of the future agreement are unknown, but it is likely that the company will pay a significant amount of money to close this stage.
For now, the economic consequences of this scandal, in addition to the damage suffered by its image, include the loss of two previous privacy cases, as well as a penalty of 5,000 million dollars imposed by the United States Federal Trade Commission and a $630,000 fine imposed by British authorities.
Photo: Nokia621
