D.C. attorney general takes legal action against Zuckerberg for Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal

Racine’s attempts to add Zuckerberg as a defendant in his ongoing Cambridge Analytica lawsuit have met with legal obstacles. He attempted to add Zuckerberg to his ongoing Cambridge Analytica lawsuit last year. However, a March judge rejected the attempt. The judge stated that Racine had waited too much to add Zuckerberg to the lawsuit and that adding him to it would not provide additional relief for consumers.

Racine’s office stated that this lawsuit is based upon hundreds of thousands pages of documents that his employees did not have access until the litigation in the Cambridge Analytica case. This includes depositions of Facebook employees as well as other whistleblowers.

Monday’s suit accuses Meta CEO of being directly involved with the decision-making that resulted in the siphoning personal data of millions Facebook users.

The suit targets Zuckerberg’s “unparalleled degree of control over Facebook’s operations.” It notes that Zuckerberg holds almost 60% of voting shares of Facebook and is involved in major company decisions.
According to the lawsuit, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is a result of Zuckerberg’s vision of opening up Facebook to third-party developers. The lawsuit also claims that Zuckerberg was aware of potential harms from sharing consumer data, but did not act. According to the lawsuit, Zuckerberg stated in an email that he knew there was a risk from data leakage.

Facebook’s handling the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed the company to international regulatory scrutiny. The company settled a record-breaking $5Billion with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019. The FTC did not issue the harsher punishments that it originally intended, including more liability for Zuckerberg.