Zuckerberg named in DC lawsuit over Cambridge Analytica scandal
DC Attorney General Karl Racine wants to hold the Facebook CEO personally responsible.
- She has a master's degree in journalism from Syracuse University.
Mark Zuckerberg has been added as a defendant in the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit.
Washington, DC, Attorney General Karl Racine is adding Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to the district's lawsuit against the social media giant over the Cambridge Analytica data breach.
In a tweet Wednesday, Racine said, "Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's failure to protect user data."
BREAKING: I just added Mark Zuckerberg as a defendant in my lawsuit against Facebook.
— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) October 20, 2021
Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data.
Facebook pushed back against the allegations.
"These allegations are as meritless today as they were more than three years ago, when the District filed its complaint. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously and focus on the facts," a Facebook spokesperson said via email.
The lawsuit was originally filed in December 2018, and Facebook has attempted to block the suit along the way.
The lawsuit accused the company of failing to safeguard the personal data of its users. Facebook's "lax oversight and misleading privacy settings" allowed Cambridge Analytica to access the personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users, the lawsuit said. The scandal led Zuckerberg to testify to Congress in 2018 about Facebook's data privacy policies.