Facebook Fights Multibillion-Dollar Privacy Class Action
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – A federal judge on Friday rejected Facebook’s argument that it cannot be sued for letting third parties, such as Cambridge Analytica, access users’ private data because no “real world” harm has resulted from the conduct.
“The injury is the disclosure of private information,” U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria declared during a marathon four-and-a-half-hour motion-to-dismiss hearing Friday.
Facebook urged Chhabria to toss out a 267-page consolidated complaint filed in a multidistrict case seeking billions of dollars in damages for Facebook’s alleged violations of 50 state and federal laws.
Facebook attorney Orin Snyder, of Gibson Dunn and Crutcher in New York, insisted that his client did nothing unlawful because Facebook users volunteered to let third parties harvest their personal data through their privacy controls.
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