Facebook Faces A Record-Setting $5 Billion Fine Over Privacy Mishaps

The Federal Trade Commission may slam a record $5 billion fine on Facebook for privacy mishaps, and the settlement was just voted last week, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

According to the publication’s report based on sources closed to the matter, the majority of the Republican favored this settlement. The report added that the FTC voted 3-2 to settle.

While we’ll have to wait for the civil division of the US Justice Department to finalize the settlement, the fine will surely be greater than Google’s 2012 record fine of $22.5 million. Both Facebook and FTC refused to give comments on the TWJ’s report.

Since 2018, the FTC has been investigating the social giant in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal – a data breach that affected 87 million Facebook users. Now, the commission is working to find out if the company violated the legal agreement between itself and the US government to secure user data privacy.

Last Friday, several lawmakers, as well as advocacy groups, expressed that they are displeased with the FTC. Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said that just a financial fine would be nothing to Facebook, the company would be let off the hook too easily.

Weissman said that an effective settlement should involve not only a fine, but also restraints on the social giant from now on, with substantive terms and structural reforms for user privacy protection. He believes that the settlement should have forced the social giant to kill its plan to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger services.

Rhode Island Democrat Rep. David Cicilline posted a series of tweets saying that a $5 billion fine will not make the social giant have a second thought about how they must be responsible for protecting user data. Cicilline claimed:

It’s true. Even though this $5 billion fine would set a new freaking high record in FTC’s history, over 220 times of the newest record fine imposed on Google, it means nothing much to Facebook. For one, except for the money, the company doesn’t seem to have to take any responsibility for the damage it’s done to user privacy and security, and there are still no particular data control regulations imposed on it. On the other hand, the number may sound huge, but it’s just a drop in the bucket for Facebook, considering that it made $5 billion just in the first quarter of the year. So the tech giant appears to have no reason to grieve over this fine at all; instead, Mark Zuckerberg’s team may even be happy about this right now.

This settlement is a win for the social firm, said Elizabeth Warren last Friday. The Democratic presidential candidate also accused the FTC of letting Facebook off too easily in spite of the improper intervention in US elections.

Shed said in her Friday tweet that within 15 minutes after the settlement report came out, the market value of Facebook increased by over $5 billion. Taking this opportunity, Warren also repeated that the FTC should just break the social giant up. She also calls to break up Amazon, Apple, and Google since they are holding too much power over the economy, democracy, and society.