Jury finds Facebook liable for deceiving users in Cambridge Analytica case

> Meta agreed in August to pay up to $18 billion to settle the multistate lawsuit surrounding child safety issues. Buried in the 130-page settlement was an agreement to release Meta from future liability related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, making New Mexico the only state to pursue a case. Florida was the only other state that did not sign the settlement, saying it was not tough enough on Meta.

This is an inconvenient reminder for people who want more "regulation" and who believe states with high levels of paper regulation like California really care about protecting consumers.

Years down the line, you'll find that a bunch of the people who worked on these cases have cush jobs working on the other side.

This was 10 years ago. Pretty crazy that this is finally seeing the justice system.

We'll probably see similar decisions on misbehavings of major LLM companies ~2036, when it won't matter anymore.

10-years old ago thing? Yeah, so fast. And what exactly will the settlement money go to?

How about real fines?

So far all these fines have been "ugh that's one day of net profits only", be it at Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook - you name it. Are there kickbacks involved to keep the fines at a minimum?

Standard PSA: Cambridge Analytica electing Trump is not a true story. Cambridge Analytica absolutely broke Facebook's terms of service with its personality quiz scheme but it did not affect the 2016 election.

I'm an advertiser who has managed hundreds of millions of dollars for small startups and big corporations, brands, as well as a few small political campaigns.

Even at the time of the Trump election, the kind of ad targeting that Cambridge Analytica says they were offering through the personality quizzes was absolute garbage. There is a reason why the official response from Boz doesn't even mention the personality quiz stuff, because it was essentially irrelevant to the Trump campaign's performance on paid advertising on Meta. And I would go further to say that, except for his success in fundraising, all of his Meta advertising probably didn't move that many votes.

Cambridge Analytica, the organization, of course, loves to claim that they're the dark evil viziers behind the Trump campaign and they've advertised themselves as such to dictators all over the world. But that's just like Edward Bernays writing "Propaganda" back in the day, it is a way to sell their services. Trump digital director Brad Parscale said the campaign did not even use Cambridge Analytica’s controversial psychographic targeting.

Not to mention, the only reason that Cambridge Analytica had that open graph information available is because communities like Hacker News begged again and again for Facebook to open the graph and not have a walled web. After that they cut off that graph access.

The key to this story is in the word "liable." That's lawyer-speak for a civil, not criminal, legal judgment. The loser must pay money, no one goes to jail, and Meta has so much money that the judgment means nothing.

Meta already pays billions to gain access to people's personal data. This is just another business expense, a line item on a balance sheet.

When faced with an adverse ruling, an individual raises his hands, is handcuffed and led away. A corporation raises its prices.

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> "Let this be a warning to every technology company doing business in our state," Torrez said Friday. "If you lie to New Mexicans about how you use their data, we will find out, and we will hold you accountable."

This is a great way to get companies to simply stop operating in your state, but keep operating everywhere else.

Since these articles tend to actually bury the data that was scraped:

  > .. the information likely included one's "public profile, page likes, birthday and current city" ..

This information was limited to what was publicly accessible on the site rather than some private data as many outlets tend to claim.

If I was on any jury ever I would vote Zuckberger guilty of everything. He is a creature of nepotism, a monster of a broken system.