United States: the Cambridge Analytica affair will end behind the scenes

Mark Zuckerberg as well as several figures in the American technological sector, which held or occupied functions within Facebook (now Meta), have concluded an agreement to put an end to an trial for negligence linked to the Cambridge Analytica case.

The transaction, reported Thursday to AFP by two sources close to the file, intervened the day after the opening of the debates before a Wilmington court (Delaware).

Facebook shareholders, a social network that has since become Meta, had seized American civil justice in 2018 after the breakup of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

This British consulting firm had collected, without authorization and without their knowledge, the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users. These data were then used for political targeting purposes during the 2016 US electoral campaign and the Brexit referendum.

The shareholders criticized Mark Zuckerberg, as well as his former number two, Sheryl Sandberg (part in 2022), for having shown, on this occasion, negligence in the management of the group.

Also the administrator Marc Andreessen were targeted, a figure in investment capital in the technological sector, as well as former members of the board of directors, the entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel and the former chief of staff of Joe Biden, Jeffrey Zients.

All were also implicated for the offense of initiates.

Meta was not prosecuted as a legal person.

The shareholders, made up of group action, claimed more than eight billion dollars in damages, a sum based on a calculation incorporating fines paid by Facebook to settle prosecution relating to Cambridge Analytica, as well as legal costs.

The fine of $ 5 billion imposed by the American Consumer Protection Agency FTC was, in part, linked to the violation of an agreement entered into 2012 with the government including Facebook’s commitment to no longer give access to third parties, without authorization, to personal data from social network users.

The accused were all to be interviewed during the trial, but the agreement avoids them a public appearance before the Delaware court, only Jeffrey Zients having testified at the opening on Wednesday.

The amount of the agreement is not known.