Meta investors and Zuckerberg square off over privacy violations
WILMINGTON: An $8 billion trial by Meta Platforms shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg and other current and former company leaders kicked off on Wednesday over claims they illegally harvested the data of Facebook users in violation of a 2012 agreement with the US Federal Trade Commission. The trial started with a privacy expert for the plaintiffs, Neil Richards of Washington University Law School, who testified about Facebook's data policies. 'Facebook's privacy disclosures were misleading,' he told the court.
Jeffrey Zients, White House chief of staff under President Joe Biden and a Meta director for two years starting in May 2018, is expected to take the stand later on Wednesday in the non-jury trial before Kathaleen McCormick, chief judge of the Delaware Chancery Court.—Reuters
The case will feature testimony from Zuckerberg and other billionaire defendants including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, venture capitalist and board member Marc Andreessen as well as former board members Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies co-founder, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix. A lawyer for the defendants, who have denied the allegations, declined to comment. McCormick, the judge who rescinded Elon Musk's $56 billion Tesla pay package last year, is expected to rule on liability and damages months after the trial concludes.
The case began in 2018, following revelations that data from millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump's successful US presidential campaign in 2016. The FTC fined Facebook $5 billion in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, saying the company had violated a 2012 agreement with the FTC to protect user data. Shareholders want the defendants to reimburse Meta for the FTC fine and other legal costs, which the plaintiffs estimate total more than $8 billion.—Reuters
In court filings, the defendants described the allegations as 'extreme' and said the evidence at trial will show Facebook hired an outside consulting firm to ensure compliance with the FTC agreement and that Facebook was a victim of Cambridge Analytica's deceit. Meta, which is not a defendant, declined to comment. On its website, the company has said it has invested billions of dollars into protecting user privacy since 2019. – Reuters
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