Facebook faces a $5 billion fine, the largest ever in Tech
At $5 billion, the fine US’s Federal Trade Commission is about to levy on Facebook is by far the largest it’s slapped on a technology company. The fine is for privacy violations and mishandling user data, media reports said.
The US Federal Trade Commission has reportedly accredited settling a probe into Facebook’s privacy violations and data protection lapses, with a $5 billion penalty on the social network, the Wall Street Journal stated on Friday July 12th.
This comes a yr after the FTC introduced reopening investigation into a privacy agreement with Facebook in 2011, when it was published that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had hijacked the private data of tens of millions of users.
However, some critics have known as for imposing tougher sanctions, along with fining Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, or monitoring the social network’s data practices.
According to The Guardian, as part of the agreement Facebook will have to look once more at ways it handles user data, but reports stated the settlement will now not avoid the company’s ability to share facts with 1/3 parties.
Critics indicated that the changes demanded of Facebook are not tremendous enough, and the fine will make little impression on Facebook’s bulging bank account, whose income stood at $15bn in the course of the first three months of the year.
Consumer team Public Knowledge’s Charlotte Slaiman referred to as for putting extra stipulations on Facebook, announcing that it has now not been clear yet whether or not the aforementioned deal will make changes to the business practices of Facebook.
“I’m hopeful that extra conditions placed on Facebook’s business practices will be forthcoming,” Slaiman said in a statement.
“Those conditions should protect not just user privacy, but also the users’ opportunity to easily leave Facebook for a competitor if they choose.”
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On July 1, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the US Department of Financial Services to investigate reviews that Facebook’s advertising platform had been used via state-regulated advertisers in a discriminatory manner. Also, he ordered two state businesses in February this year to inspect a report that Facebook may also be gaining access to far extra non-public facts from smartphone users, than had previously been known, he defined that this records consists of fitness and other sensitive data.
