Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was named personally in a Washington lawsuit on Monday, alleging that he had a direct role in decisions that led to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
The US capital’s attorney general claims that Zuckerberg was intimately involved in developing the framework that allowed the UK-based consulting firm to harvest data from over 70 million US Facebook users.
In 2018, a whistleblower revealed that Cambridge Analytica used that data for political purposes, including attempting to rally support for Donald Trump.
“Zuckerberg is not just a figurehead at Facebook; he is personally involved in nearly every decision the company makes,” Washington Attorney General Karl Racine wrote in the suit.
He went on to say that Zuckerberg’s power is built into the company’s structure, with the founder and CEO holding a majority of voting shares.
Racine’s office filed a lawsuit against Facebook in 2018 for its data privacy practices, which is still ongoing.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, did not respond immediately to the new lawsuit’s allegations, but spokesperson Andy Stone noted on Twitter that a judge previously rejected Racine’s bid to add Zuckerberg as a defendant in the privacy case.
In the aftermath of the scandal, US authorities imposed a “historic” $5 billion fine on Facebook, as well as requiring Facebook to strengthen privacy safeguards, provide detailed quarterly reports on compliance with the agreement, and have an independent oversight board.
Since the Cambridge Analytica crisis occurred, Facebook has blocked hundreds of apps from accessing its data, limited the amount of information available to developers in general, and made it easier for users to set personal data sharing limitations.
To read our blog on “Another shot at Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision from an Amazon hardware executive,” click here.
