Broken Privacy Promises - Facebook and the FTC
Verity Winship University of Illinois College of Law
Facebook may pay billions in fines for broken privacy promises. In 2018, the federal agency watchdog for consumer fraud—the Federal Trade Commission—announced an investigation of Facebook. For breaking promises to users, of course, but also for breaking a deal it made with the agency almost a decade ago. The FTC sued Facebook in 2011. The action settled, with Facebook agreeing to monitoring and policy fixes. Fast forward to 2018 and Facebook is in trouble again. This radio commentary looks at the consequences of broken privacy promises and what it means for the second round of the FTC versus Facebook.