Facebook May Be Fined Trillions of Dollars for FTC Violation
$40,000 USD for each and every fine.
Facebook may be fined an obscene amount of money by the Federal Trade Commission if officials find that the company committed a violation in relation to the recent Cambridge Analytica mishap. Each fine could be up to $40,000 USD, according to The Washington Post. However, in Facebook’s case, each user whose data was harvested can be considered a single violation, racking the fine up to $2 trillion USD.
The FTC consent decree explicitly states users must give their consent before any data is shared about them that has not been issued as private by the users. Cambridge Analytica received data not just about Facebook users who allowed their information to be shared, of which they subsequently harvested non-related data, but information from those users’ friends as well — just for being in association with those whose information was originally harvested. FTC officials believe this to be a violation of the aforementioned consent decree.
In related news, Tinder’s parent company is suing Bumble.
