Facebook shareholders have reportedly alleged that the social media giant overpaid $5 billion (roughly Rs. 36,928 crores) to the American antitrust watchdog to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg from personal liability related to the Cambridge Analytica data leak probe. The shareholders said to have alleged in two lawsuits, which were filed last month but made public on Tuesday, that Facebook’s board allowed the company to pay extra on top of the fine sought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2019. The lawsuits, reportedly filed in Delaware, cite internal discussions among the board members. Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, is said to have improperly obtained personal data of 87 million Facebook users for advertising during the 2016 US Presidential elections.
In a long Twitter thread, Jason Kint, the Chief Executive Officer of Digital Content Next, a trade group for digital content producers, outlined the major points of the lawsuits that together run over 600 pages. He called it the “mother of all lawsuits”.
!!! news. mother of all lawsuits quietly filed last month vs Facebook in Delaware. I'll explain why it avoided notice until now in a bit but Zuckerberg, Sandberg, CFO, board inc Peter Thiel and Palantir are defendants – it's a result of sealed docs between FB execs and board. /1 pic.twitter.com/FSWtV8T8MG
— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) September 21, 2021