The District of Columbia has sued Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg. It's seeking to hold him personally liable for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., on Oct. 5. Facebook said it was working to fix the privacy problem reported by The Wall Street Journal.
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed the civil lawsuit against Zuckerberg in D.C. Superior Court. The lawsuit maintains that Zuckerberg directly participated in important company decisions and was aware of the potential dangers of sharing users’ data, such as occurred in the case involving data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.s without their permission. Their data is alleged to have been used to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.
Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple have been targeted in legal actions in recent years by federal regulators and state attorneys general of both parties accusing the tech behemoths of market dominance and abuse. But Racine’s suit brought the rare action of a regulator specifically aiming at a Big Tech CEO.