Washington D.C. Attorney General Adds Mark Zuckerberg To Cambridge Analytica Privacy Suit

Facebook’s very bad month got even worse this week as Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine added the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to an existing privacy lawsuit. The case deals with the Cambridge Analytica scandal from 2016, which alleges that the social media giant failed to properly protect user data from a third-party marketing firm.

“Based on the evidence we gathered in this case over the past two years and the District’s investigation more generally, it’s clear Mr. Zuckerberg knowingly and actively participated in each decision that led to Cambridge Analytica’s mass collection of Facebook user data, and Facebook’s misrepresentations to users about how secure their data was,” Racine said in a statement.

“Under these circumstances, Mr. Zuckerberg should be held liable for his involvement in the decisions that enabled the exposure of millions of users’ data — and that’s why we’re adding him to our complaint,” he continued.

Of course, Facebook has already filed to dismiss this lawsuit, though its motion was denied. Meanwhile, Racine expects this case to be formally tried in 2023. In other words, we’re a long way from knowing how this is all going to end — but by personally naming Zuckerberg in the suit, the stakes of this case have just increased exponentially.




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