Karl Racine, Attorney General of Washington DC, said that he was going to pursue the boss of Meta (formerly Facebook) in connection with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He accuses Mark Zuckerberg of violating consumer protection rules.
Mark Zuckerberg personally charged
Meta’s troubles in the Cambridge Analytica affair are far from over. The Attorney General for the District of Columbia has decided to file a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg. It is not the company that is targeted this time, but the man. The founder of Facebook is personally accused. Now that we know that employees had launched the alert as early as 2015 and that Facebook bosses were aware of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Karl Racine criticizes Mark Zuckerberg for having participated in the foreground in the decision-making which led to the major data breach that we are aware of.
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Karl Racine claims that Zuckerberg “contributed to poor monitoring and protection of user data by Facebook and the implementation of misleading privacy agreements”. According to the complaint, this allowed the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, to acquire personal data on more than 70 million Americans, including more than 340,000 Washington DC residents. As we now know, the company allegedly used this data to help influence voters in the 2016 presidential election through the targeting of political ads.
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Meta, the company of Mark Zuckerberg, was already prosecuted for this scandal in 2018, but the case is still ongoing. This time, the Attorney General is directly attacking the boss of the company. By virtue of the jurisdiction’s consumer protection procedures lawwhich prohibits unfair and deceptive commercial practices, individuals are “responsible for the actions of a company that they knew about, controlled, or failed to stop”. This is why the boss of Meta is taking a big risk in this trial.
The Attorney General is asking for a jury trial. He wants the CEO of Meta to refrain from any future violation of this consumer protection law and to pay damages. Karl Racine believes that “This lawsuit is not only justified because of the consequences of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but it is also necessary. It sends a message that corporate leaders, including big bosses, will be held accountable for their actions”. He adds that “it is the ongoing investigation and the evidence discovered that pushes us to initiate this trial”.