Lawsuit alleges settlement of lawsuit against Facebook to protect Zuckerberg

The lawsuit alleges that if he had mentioned Zuckerberg's name personally in the complaint, he would have faced heavy fines

A lawsuit alleges that Facebook paid $4.9 billion - too much - to the US Federal Trade Commission, as part of a settlement over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in order to protect Mark Zuckerberg, Dan Melmo wrote in the Guardian. (The Guardian).

The writer said the lawsuit alleges that the nearly $5 billion settlement was motivated by a desire to protect the Facebook founder and CEO from being named in the FTC complaint.

Facebook was fined by the Federal Trade Commission in 2019 for "deceiving" users about its ability to keep personal information private, after a year-long investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data breach, in which a British analytics firm collected millions of Facebook profiles of American voters.

The lawsuit, which was filed by Delaware shareholders last August and announced this week, said that Zuckerberg, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and other Facebook managers agreed to authorize a multi-billion dollar settlement with the Federal Trade Commission; In return for protecting Zuckerberg from being named in the FTC complaint, being subject to personal liability, or even being asked to testify.

The lawsuit alleges that the settlement amount was about $4.9 billion, the largest fine ever faced by Facebook.

The lawsuit alleges that if Zuckerberg had been personally mentioned in the complaint, he could have faced heavy fines for future violations and would have suffered "serious damage to his reputation". "The risk would have been too substantial for Zuckerberg, who is extraordinarily sensitive about his public image and reportedly has political ambitions."

The lawsuit also accuses Facebook of taking a lax approach to corporate governance, especially with regard to its founder.

In a post on his Facebook page after the fine was announced at the time, Zuckerberg said the company had changed the way it handles user information.

"We've agreed to pay a historic fine, but more importantly, we're going to make some major structural changes to how we build products and run this company," he wrote.

Facebook declined to comment on the new lawsuit, but referred the Guardian to a recent tweet from Andy Stone, the company's spokesperson who wrote: "Picturing this as some sort of new claim is wrong. This settlement is not new and is something we will address during the litigation."