The US Federal Trade Commission has approved a fine of USD 5 billion on Facebook for violating the personal data privacy agreement it reached with the US government in 2011/2012, Reuters reported. The fine follows the Cambridge Analytica incident of 2018, when Facebook shared data belonging to 87 million of its users. The settlement would be the largest civil penalty ever paid to the agency, but a number of lawmakers said the penalty was not high enough.
The settlement still needs to be finalised by the Justice Department’s Civil Division. A final decision is expected very soon, Reuters' sources said, adding that 20 years of oversight will also likely be part of the settlement, as well as restrictions on how Facebook treats user privacy.
Both the FTC and Facebook declined to comment on the proposed settlement.
Facebook has set aside USD 3 billion in anticipation of the FTC penalty. The company still faces more investigations from the FTC and Justice Department regarding market competition and for its planned Libra currency project, while some lawmakers are calling for the company to be broken up.
