Zuckerberg Faces Trial in $8 Billion Meta Privacy Lawsuit
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear before a court this week to defend himself against an $8 billion shareholder lawsuit which accuses him and other top executives of not stopping major privacy breaches at Facebook.
The Delaware trial starting on Wednesday will focus on Facebook leadership's failure to uphold the 2012 Federal Trade Commission agreement to protect user data which led to the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal that exposed millions of user information.
The shareholders demand that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg along with COO Sheryl Sandberg and board members Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel pay back the company for both the scandal-related fines and legal expenses which include the $5 billion FTC penalty from 2019. Meta itself is not a defendant.
The court will determine if board members understood their responsibility to enforce privacy measures and what level of awareness they had regarding internal system breakdowns. The events from nine years ago remain significant because Meta currently faces criticism about its AI training methods.
The trial will possibly reveal the board members' understanding of the situation and their timeline of awareness according to Digital Content Next's Jason Kint.
The non-jury trial will continue for eight days. The defendants reject all allegations by stating that the claims exceed reasonable limits.
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