Facebook may face multiple government investigations — and trillions of dollars in fines — over revelations that it didn’t do enough to protect user data used by the Trump campaign to target voters in 2016, according to a report.
Mark Zuckerberg’s social network may have violated a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission when it allowed an academic to hoover up the data of as many as 50 million unwitting users — just because they had a friend who had agreed to use an app, two former FTC officials told the Washington Post.
That data were eventually turned over to a UK data firm, Cambridge Analytica, that had former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon on its board.
The data firm then used the Facebook info to help the Trump campaign win the 2016 election, according to reports this weekend.
“I would not be surprised if at some point the FTC looks at this. I would expect them to,” David Vladeck, a former director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, told The Washington Post.
The violation “bespeaks the same recklessness with its users’ data that prompted the FTC to take action in 2011,” Jessica Rich, a former ex-FTC deputy director, said.
In a 2011 settlement, Facebook agreed to 20 years of FTC oversight after it failed to notify users of changes to its privacy rules.
The FTC had the right to fine Facebook up to $40,000 per future infraction.
Facebook claims there was no wrongdoing and didn’t violate the consent decree.
