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Investors sue Facebook as data harvesting row grows

* $50 billion wiped off social media giant’s value * Company accused of making false statements

Billy Kenber, Investigations Reporter | Mark Bridge | Simon de Bruxelles
March 21 2018, 12:00pm, The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cambridge-analytica-british-data-firm-offered-1m-bribe-to-turn-election-psmv359vh

Investors are suing Facebook, claiming that the company made “false and misleading statements” about its policies that failed to prevent a disgraced British firm obtaining the data of 50 million users.

Fan Yuan, a shareholder, filed the lawsuit in San Francisco on behalf of an undisclosed number of investors, claiming that Facebook’s “omissions” led to a “precipitous” decline in the company’s share price, which wiped almost $50 billion off the company’s value on Monday and Tuesday.

The action piles pressure on the social media company, which is under investigation by US and British officials, and came as Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp backed calls to “delete Facebook” which were trending on Twitter last night. Mr Acton, whose firm was bought by Facebook for £16 billion three years ago, wrote: “It is time. #deletefacebook” has gained nearly 5,000 retweets and 10,000 “likes”. In a subsequent tweet he added “Delete and forget. It’s time to care about privacy.”

The Silicon Valley giant has also been embarrassed by old comments from its co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that resurfaced on social media. Critics of the company shared a transcript of a conversation he had as a 19-year-old student at Harvard when he told a friend he had private information on 4,000 fellow students. Asked why people gave him access to the information, he said: “They ‘trust me’. Dumb f****s.”

Mr Zuckerberg, 33, has previously admitted writing the messages, which he “absolutely” regrets.

Last night Chris Wylie, the whistleblower who lifted the lid on Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of Facebook data expressed disappointment at the company’s reaction to his revelations. He said that as recently as last week the firm had agreed to work with him on improving their platform before cutting off communications and closing his Facebook account when the story broke.

The former Cambridge Analytica contractor, who told The Observer how the firm acquired Facebook data for US political campaigning from a researcher who was authorised to gather it for research purposes — but not to share it with third-parties— told an audience at the Frontline Club in London: “It’s Facebook’s behaviour that has caused that knock in share price, not me.”

Mr Wylie said he had been working with the information commissioner and British authorities “for months”. He said he could not be sure whether the information collected by Cambridge Analytica had been shared with the Russians but noted that “we created a very large dataset of Facebook users using a Russian professor who was going back and forward to Russia.”

Aleksander Kogan, the Cambridge academic, who has also been paid by the Russian government for research, said today that he has been scapegoated by both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. He said Cambridge Analytica approached him to create “personality tests” that would harvest the data of Facebook users and everyone in their friend networks and assured him that it was perfectly legitimate to share this data.

Cambridge Analytica claims that it was the other way round and that Dr Kogan assured the company that he was allowed to share the data. Facebook’s rules at the time permitted Dr Kogan to gather the data for research purposes but not to share it with third-parties.

The Times revealed today that Cambridge Analytica, which is accused of using dirty tricks to manipulate elections, entrapped a Caribbean politician with the offer of a £1 million bribe to secure victory for its clients.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cambridge-analytica-british-data-firm-offered-1m-bribe-to-turn-election-psmv359vh