Facebook will now pay a $5 billion fine to America’s Federal Trade Commission as settlement. The payment will be the fine for privacy breaches and Cambridge Analytica scandal. They signed the agreement on Wednesday, 24th July 2019, signalling an end to the year-long investigation on Facebook’s violations.
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In the agreement, the FTC says Facebook broke the law by not protecting users’ data from third parties. It also said they served ads with phone numbers provided for security. That’s not all; FTC alleged that Facebook lied to users that their facial recognition software was turned off by default when it was not.
The fine served to Facebook for these charges are allegedly the second-largest fine the FTC ever levied. In addition to this fine, Facebook will also have to conduct a privacy review of all its products and services. The company must then submit these reviews to the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and a third-party assessor every quarter.
On the issue of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook will need to get the “purpose and use certifications from apps and third-party developers to use Facebook user data.” The FTC commissioners responsible, in a statement, said: “The Order imposes a privacy regime that includes a new corporate governance structure, with corporate and individual accountability and more rigorous compliance monitoring.”
Facebook will also pay $100 million
“This approach dramatically increases the likelihood that Facebook will be compliant with the Order; if there are any deviations, they likely will be detected and remedied quickly,” it added.
As regards Facebook’s facial recognition software, the tech giants will need to obtain affirmative consent to create new facial recognition models. However, this affirmation may not be required on old models that had been created without consent.
In response to all these, Facebook made a blog post. It wrote:
“The agreement will require a fundamental shift in the way we approach our work, and it will place additional responsibility on people building our products at every level of the company. It will mark a sharper turn toward privacy, on a different scale than anything we’ve done in the past.”
Apart from the $5 billion fine, Facebook will pay $100 million to the Security and Exchange Commission in America. This is as punishment for failing to disclose the breach to its investors. Facebook then said: “The agreement will require a fundamental shift in the way we approach our work, and it will place additional responsibility on people building our products at every level of the company.”
