(DISH) in 2017 - reflecting the tremendous scale of Facebook’s operations, as well as the enormity of its self-admitted mistakes. The $5 billion fine is nearly 30 times the FTC’s largest-ever civil penalty to date - $168 million, which was levied on Dish Network
The FTC settlement - which also covers Facebook subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp - could set the tone for a wave of further action by policymakers worldwide as they seek to rein in the most powerful players in Silicon Valley.ĭemocrats and Republicans find unity in trashing Big Tech Separately Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Facebook had agreed to pay $100 million to settle “charges… for making misleading disclosures regarding the risk of misuse of Facebook user data.”įacebook’s stock was down slightly when the market opened Wednesday morning.
We already work hard to live up to this responsibility, but now we’re going to set a completely new standard for our industry.” We have a responsibility to protect people’s privacy. In a Facebook post published shortly after the FTC’s announcement Wednesday, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “We’ve agreed to pay a historic fine, but even more important, we’re going to make some major structural changes to how we build products and run this company. “The relief is designed not only to punish future violations but, more importantly, to change Facebook’s entire privacy culture to decrease the likelihood of continued violations.” “The magnitude of the $5 billion penalty and sweeping conduct relief are unprecedented in the history of the FTC,” said Chairman Joseph Simons in a statement. And the company allegedly deceived “tens of millions of users” by implying that a facial recognition feature on the service had not been enabled by default, when in fact it had. Facebook also broke the law, the FTC alleged, by misusing phone numbers obtained for account security purposes to also target advertisements to its users. The settlement resolves a formal complaint by the FTC alleging that Facebook “used deceptive disclosures and settings” that eroded user privacy, violating a prior agreement Facebook signed with the commission in 2012. The deal comes amid growing calls in Washington for greater transparency and accountability for technology companies, whose power over social movements as well as personal information has increasingly come to be seen as dangerous by politicians, users, and even one of Facebook’s co-founders.įacebook agreed to the deal following years of damaging admissions about the company’s privacy practices, such as the inadvertent exposure of up to 87 million users’ information to the political analysis firm Cambridge Analytica. It is the largest fine in FTC history - and yet still only about a month’s worth of revenue for Facebook (FB) on Wednesday, resolving a sweeping investigation by regulators into how the company lost control over massive troves of personal data and mishandled its communications with users. The Federal Trade Commission announced a $5 billion settlement with Facebook
0 kommentar(er)
