Facebook faces stockholder suit over $4.9bil FTC fine

[Eli the Bearded]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/facebook-paid-ftc-4-9b-more-than-required-to-shield-zuckerberg-lawsuit-alleges/

In a newly unsealed lawsuit, Facebook shareholders allege that the
company intentionally overpaid a $5 billion Federal Trade Commission
fine to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg from further government
scrutiny.

"Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and other Facebook directors agreed to
authorize a multi-billion settlement with the FTC as an express quid
pro quo to protect Zuckerberg from being named in the FTC's
complaint, made subject to personal liability, or even required to
sit for a deposition," the lawsuit says (emphasis in the original).
An early draft of the order obtained by The Washington Post through
the Freedom of Information Act shows that the commission was
considering holding Zuckerberg responsible.
[...]
"Facebook's maximum monetary exposure was $104,751,390--about $4.9
billion less than it agreed to pay," shareholders said in the
lawsuit. The overpayment, they said, is a breach of fiduciary duty.

The lawsuit also alleges that, by withholding information about the
Cambridge Analytica leak, executives and board members, including
Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, engaged in insider trading.
"After Zuckerberg learned of Cambridge Analytica's massive
extraction of Facebook user data, he and the entities controlled by
him significantly accelerated his sales of Facebook shares," the
lawsuit says.

Later on, about the company's resonse:

Another initiative, known as Project Amplify, reportedly injects
pro-Facebook content into people's News Feeds. Joe Osborne, a
Facebook spokesperson, has denied any changes to the News Feed's
ranking algorithm. Yet judging by the New York Times article, such
changes may not be necessary. The company reportedly uses a tool
known as Quick Promote to inject the content, which includes links
to articles written by Facebook or third parties that cast the
company in a positive light. The PR posts are flagged with small
Facebook logos. Osborne said the posts are "similar to corporate
responsibility initiatives people see in other technology and
consumer products," a statement which elides the fact that most
other companies don't have ready access to more than 2 billion
people.

The company has insisted that many of the recent stories written
about it--from the aforementioned article revealing Project Amplify
to the extensive Wall Street Journal expose--contain falsehoods.
"These stories have contained deliberate mischaracterizations of
what we are trying to do," Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of
global affairs, wrote in a blog post.

If Facebook is truly using its platform to improve its image, expect
more stories with a positive spin to appear in News Feeds in the
coming months: the whistleblower behind the WSJ's series has turned
over documents to lawmakers, The Washington Post reports. The person
reportedly intends to go public by the end of the year, possibly by
testifying before a Senate panel.

Who are you going to believe? The "friendly" blue site that provides all
the news or those outsiders wanting to separate you from your "friends"?

Elijah
------
burn it to the ground and salt the earth where it stood

[JAB]

On Fri, 24 Sep 2021 19:36:22 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded
<*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

>Who are you going to believe?

It would not surprise me if Zuckerberg took Trump's sucker bait.



Peter Thiel said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg agreed not to fact-check
Trump administration posts in exchange for lenient regulation, new
book claims

<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10009669/amp/Peter-Thiel-said-Zuckerberg-agreed-Trump-push-state-sanctioned-conservatism-new-book-says.html>