This past Wednesday, Facebook was in court facing multidistrict litigation coming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the social media giant argued that they couldn’t have violated user’s privacy because users should have no expectation of privacy when it comes to social media platforms.
The scandal-ridden company continues to argue that the only way to ensure information stays private is not to head to its platform to share it. Facebook called for the class action case by its users to be thrown out of court. People who used the platform believe that Facebook invaded their privacy since third parties were allowed to harvest personal information from 87 million unsuspecting users.
Facebook did indeed confirm that user’s data was accessed by Cambridge Analytica as was revealed on March last year but blamed users claiming that they had agreed to share information with third parties.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria agreed to allow the claim by users that their private information was made public without their permission. This is where things get crazy.
Facebook agreed that they exposed user data to third parties and they tried to convince the judge that users on Facebook or any other social media platform should have no expectation of privacy.
Facebook Counsel Orin Synder continues by saying that social media is the opposite of private which according to the judge disputes the company’s new mantra and the recent shift to protecting user data and privacy.
It gets even crazier as the counsel goes to add that there is no invasion of privacy at all because there is no privacy.
Facebook insisted that it gives users privacy settings and that they have to set them up by themselves. Judge Chhabria didn’t agree with this saying users wouldn’t read from Facebook’s terms of service to update settings on the app and suggested Facebook be required to express consent from users when it updates terms of service, instead of just notifying them of the changes.
https://twitter.com/linamkhan/status/1134155195494129670
