Facebook settles Cambridge Analytica class action for undisclosed amount Meta's Platforms has reached an agreement to settle the consumer lawsuits brought as a result of Cambridge Analytica's unauthorized harvesting of user data – an outcome that means Facebook execs won't be required to testify in court. A filing [PDF] dated August 26 requested that judge Vince Chhabria put the class action on …
The law is an unwieldy beast. The challenge would be balancing the benefits of informing the public with the benefits of individuals being able to reach a meaningful settlement in the face of deep pocketed corporations and legal fees nibbling at any potential settlement.
If the state funded all individual legal actions then that too would likely result in the need to persuade the state to pursue action, as well as the largest corporations being able to outspend the state. Effectively, creating additional barriers before a case even opens.
> a meaningful settlement in the face of deep pocketed corporations
This is the problem, corporations will tell you to settle for some ridiculously small amount of bribe money and drop the case, or else they will ruin you, litigating you into the ground. It's an offer you can't refuse.
For big corporations it's literally a get-out-of-jail card, as their puny opponents don't have the financial stamina to survive any prolonged arm wrestling. For a (comparatively) small amount of money they can make any problem go magically away.
No. Any settlement should not allow the implied companies to avoid admitting their wrongdoings. If you can buy your innocence certificate just by throwing money to lawyers, there's no justice to begin with. The settlement should include a written admittance by the company acknowledging their mistake/misbehaving, along with restitutory damages for the affected parties.
Absolutely, the terms of any legal settlement should be public.
The other problem is a settlement invariably means neither side accept responsibility or blame so Facebook and Zuck are officially not guilty of enabling Cambridge Analytica to subvert US & UK politics. IMO settlement should be an acceptance of guilt, if you are not guilty you wouldn't be settling; at least in corporate cases.
You could tell from the footage of his grilling before congress that Zuckerberg very much does not like being questioned. A lot of memes were circulated making fun of his bland, robotic demeanour: the man was sweating like warm Emmental, clearly rigid with fear that he would be publicly exposed and held to account.
That is the problem with civil litigation.
Where is the public prosecutor on this? Anyone?
I understand that the proof threshold is greater (beyond reasonable doubt rather than preponderance of the evidence/balance of probabilities), but a settlement should be available in full to a public prosecutor to decide whether there is merit for a criminal case.
Wouldn't it be nice if a judge could at some point during a trial determine that no more settlement was permitted?
"All that data is alleged to have been used during the USA's 2016 Presidential election, campaigners for Brexit, and by Russian misinformation operatives."
But all the politicians involved in these related events are still saying that there was no Russian misinformation because the election and voting was all completely valid choices by citizens in all Facebook influenced countries so will we be told that consumer lawsuits now Remainer lawsuits?
It doesn't matter if someone used CA to do something good, that is outweighed by the vast negatives that were done. Personally, I would argue that nothing good can be done by stealing people's private information without their permission, no matter the purpose.
To me "the Russians" are just noise and really hide the reality of what Russia was doing. What you have with CA is one of the most explosive political scandals of all time, the notion that you can take the uncertainty out of elections. Its really clever stuff but at the same time really scary -- Zuk might have been able to buy off the lawsuit but there's still the transcript of that Parliamentary Committee to explain away. Or bury. It presages a world that's part 1984, part Brazil and part Idiocracy. Scary stuff.
The Russian angle could easily be explained by the fact that any smart government would need to figure out just how deep this rabbit hole goes. Russia has been on the receiving end of all sorts of propaganda efforts for decades, everything from Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (still going strong, financed of course by we, the US Taxpayer) and any number of NGOs. They're hardly going to use the tool against themselves so they'll just generate a pilot program to see what can be done with a little money. The news obviously gives our pols cover which may turn out to be far more devastating to us than any propaganda victory.
Thank you martinusher. For a minute there I almost thought the Russians might have started the propaganda war in the first place. Good to be reassured their lies and deceit were only a pilot program with a small budget. Is it going to end when that budget is used up?
Why you must NEVER trust Facebook. The 2016 election (US), Brexit, and Russian Disinformation were all fed by FB dats illegally gathered from ad many as 80 million? users. Execs from FB were to testify under oath next month but bailed and settled. Under oath is as frightening to Zuck and company as it is to Trump.
Read Mindf**ck by Christopher Whylie.
There's so much rubbish in IT these days, it's hardly worth the effort or cost of installing IT and learning how to be used by the stuff, over and over again !!!!
For some reason, "Here we go around the mulberry bush", keeps popping into my mind.
Information Trust has evaporated.
ALF
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