Latest Class Action Alleges Facebook, Zuckerberg Knew of, Ignored Cambridge Analytica’s Data Mining to Sway 2016 Election

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Two Illinois residents have filed the latest proposed class action lawsuit in federal court against Facebook, Inc., CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Cambridge Analytica over the parties’ alleged roles in using the unscrupulously obtained personal information of more than 53 million Facebook users to influence the 2016 presidential election. 

“This civil action is about a severe and unprecedented breach of trust committed by the Defendants which allowed Cambridge to secretly and unlawfully mine the sensitive personal data of at least 300,000 Facebook users to help Cambridge and its cronies manipulate and misuse Facebook to target voters to help influence the results of the 2016 Presidential Election.”

The 49-page complaint reads as a timeline of events, starting with the beginnings of Cambridge Analytica—which was overseen in its earliest days by former Trump consigliere Steven Bannon—and arching all the way to The Guardian’s March 2018 report detailing how now-suspended Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix admitted—while secretly being filmed—to the oft-suspect and possibly illegal nature of the data firm’s services. According to the lawsuit, Nix’s disclosures run contrary to previous statements saying Cambridge had not received any data from Facebook.

As alleged in similar litigation filed this week, the complaint claims the primary tool Cambridge Analytica used to obtain users’ information was a third-party personality survey app called MyDigitalLife. Through the app, the lawsuit says, Cambridge Analytica was able to build a personality profile for hundreds of thousands of Facebook users, which then allowed the company to mine the information of and psychologically profile millions more.

A March 21 Facebook post from Zuckerberg explained that upon learning in 2015 that data from the app was shared with Cambridge Analytica, the app, developed as a personality quiz by Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan, was immediately removed. Facebook also demanded Cambridge Analytica formally certify that it had deleted all improperly obtained data, the case says, a request the company may not have followed up on.

“Zuckerberg, Facebook and other John Doe Defendants did not undertake reasonable measures to ensure that Cambridge deleted the personal information of Facebook users that was improperly obtained by Cambridge,” the complaint reads. “We know this to be the case because Defendant Zuckerberg’s March 21, 2018 Facebook post conceded that Cambridge did not delete the improperly obtained personal information of Facebook users.”

After taking a long look at Zuckerberg’s statements from this week as to whether Facebook had ever properly looked into third-party apps improperly obtaining users’ personal information, the lawsuit outright charges the social media platform knew of Cambridge Analytica’s conduct and simply ignored it. The complaint additionally points out that Facebook is subject to a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission intended to safeguard users’ personal information.

The plaintiffs claim they never downloaded the MyDigitalLife app, yet because their other Facebook friends used it, they were still bombarded with “specifically targeted posts, messages, advertisements and other data promoting Donald Trump”—messages the lawsuit says essentially promoted “fake news” to make Hillary Clinton look like the worse candidate.

Considering the two filed earlier this week, this lawsuit makes at least seven cases thus far that have been filed over Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s conduct concerning users’ information and its alleged misuse during the 2016 presidential election.

The complaint can be read below.