Facebook’s Settlement in Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit

What is the issue?

Facebook has agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users.

It is primarily about the Facebook’s role in the 2016 U.S. election.
A probe revealed that a London-based data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, misused data from as many as 50 million Facebook users.
The firm collected the personal data of many users without their consent to build psychographic profiles of voters.
The potential voters’ personality traits, ideology, and beliefs were then built.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign is said to have used the services of Cambridge Analytica to influence voters by micro-targeting them.
It was also accused by a whistleblower of pursing voter suppression tactics targeting Black voters.

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Role in Cambridge Analytica Scandal
- Allowing unauthorised access to its users’ data
- Slow response to data breach and in informing the user community
- Refuting the claims of Cambridge Analytica that they deleted the collected data after realising that it went against Facebook’s terms
Other cases- U.S. residents who used Facebook after 2015 alleged that the company tracked their location via their IP address despite them disabling the location service option.
In 2019, Facebook paid a record 5 billion dollar to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges for deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal info.

It apologised for the breach of trust and admitted that the company didn’t do enough to deal with it.

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has
- Removed data access from thousands of apps suspected of abusing
- Restricted the amount of information available to developers
- Made it easier for users to calibrate restrictions on personal data sharing
In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a fine imposed by the U.K. for breaches of data protection law related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

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