Mark Zuckerberg Sued Over Data Breach Scandal

The US District of Columbia is suing Mark Zuckerberg over the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw breached data of as many as 87 million Facebook users. The US District of Columbia is looking to hold Mr. Zuckerberg personally liable for the breach.

Back in 2018, Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm, was accused of illegally harvesting Facebook users’ data. The harvested data is suspected of having been used to manipulate the 2016 US presidential election.

D.C. Attorney General is seeking damages and penalties from the Facebook founder after filing a civil lawsuit in the D.C. Superior Court.

The lawsuit states that Mark Zuckerberg was aware of the potential risks and dangers that sharing Facebook users’ data posed. 

Mr. Zuckerberg largely participated in the making of important decisions in the company, so the civil lawsuit maintains that he must have known how possibly dangerous sharing data with a company like the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica could be.

Facebook today has almost three billion users around the world. Mark Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook, and he controls more than 50% of Facebook’s voting shares. 

He has been at the head of the board since 2012, and he “maintains an unparalleled level of control” into the inner workings of Facebook, the lawsuit states. 

This incident is the first time Mark Zuckerberg has been personally sued over the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal that exposed over 87 million users’ data.