The Cambridge Analytica scandal returned to haunt Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta when Washington District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine announced that his office will sue the social media titan’s founder for his role in Meta’s misleading privacy practices and failure to protect millions of users’ data.
The action filed by the AG seeks to hold Zuckerberg liable for his role in Meta’s breach of District consumer protection regulations by misrepresenting the protection of user data and neglecting and exploiting sensitive, personal data belonging to District residents.
Racine stated in a series of Tweets, “Our investigation reveals substantial evidence that Zuckerberg was intimately engaged in the failings that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.”
In the AG’s lawsuit, it is stated that “Meta has become a hugely successful and unique corporation, gaining immense income from gathering and monetising the data of those billions of individuals living their lives in Meta’s digital environment.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Meta modified its business model in this manner at Zuckerberg’s instruction because it understood that it might be much more profitable if it could harness and sell to third parties the power to reliably affect the behavior of its users. Therefore, Meta pushed (and at times collaborated with) developers and academics to gather and analyze Meta user data so that it could better understand how to affect its users’ moods, influence what they purchase, and even sway their voting decisions.
The Cambridge Analytica Case
Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower, said in March 2018 that Cambridge Analytica, a London-based electioneering firm, took the personal information of more than 70 million Meta users in the United States to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections.
This goldmine of data includes Meta users’ ages, hobbies, favorite pages, organizations to which they belong, geographical locations, political affiliation, religious affiliation, relationships, photographs, complete names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
The personal information of more than 70 million Meta users in the United States that Cambridge Analytica exploited to sway the election represented more than half of all votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, which was essentially determined by a few hundred thousand people.
Three years later, Meta and Zuckerberg publicly criticized Cambridge Analytica’s data acquisition, which, according to AG Racine, just proves that what they say publicly is part of a deliberate scheme to conceal the terrible repercussions of their activities.
Allegations Against Mark Zuckerberg
Focusing on the Cambridge Analytica issue, the lawsuit said that Meta deliberately encouraged organizations like Cambridge Analytica to utilize the platform to manipulate and influence customer behavior.
‘What is most worrisome is that Meta investigated Cambridge Analytica and decided that it presented a risk to consumer data, but opted to conceal those concerns rather than halt Cambridge Analytica because doing so would have harmed Meta’s (and Zuckerberg’s) profit line. Instead of coming clean, Meta continued to assist Cambridge Analytica to win a presidential election in the United States, according to the complaint.
