Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s preceding COO and board member, has been penalized by a Delaware judge for allegedly erasing emails tied to the renowned Cambridge Analytica privacy controversy.
This stems from a lawsuit lodged by Meta shareholders against Sandberg and Jeff Zients, another ex-board member of Meta, around last year’s end. Sandberg and Zients were accused of exploiting personal emails to discuss topics concerning a 2018 lawsuit by shareholders. The lawsuit charged Facebook leaders with neglecting their legal obligations along with fiduciary duties by disregarding users’ privacy.
The plaintiffs maintained that despite court’s orders, Sandberg and Zients went ahead to eliminate emails from their private accounts. The overseeing judge believed these allegations to be credible, causing a sanction against Sandberg.
The ruling directed straight light on Sandberg’s confidential Gmail, managed under a pseudonym. “The shortcomings to deliver candid answers in Sandberg’s interrogatory feedback or replying to plaintiffs’, fortifies the presumption that Sandberg was selectively choosing which emails to erase.”
With Sandberg’s sanctions, the judge heightened the legal standard for her affirmative defence. She must now confirm her defence by “clear and convincing” evidence, instead of the simpler-to-meet “preponderance” of evidence.
The lawsuit’s core claims are that Meta executives infringed a 2012 FTC order where agreement was made not to accumulate and share Facebook users’ personal data without approval. The allegation suggests that Facebook later sold the data to commercial partners like Cambridge Analytica, and disclosures were taken out from privacy settings, mandatory under FTC’s orders.
In response, Meta, in 2019, settled to pay the FTC $5 billion for contravening the 2012 order, and has also paid penalties to European regulators.
Original source: Read the full article on TechCrunch
