Facebook Hit With Record $5 Billion Fine Over Cambridge Analytica Privacy Breach

In 2018, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, had harvested the personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge or consent. The data was collected through a personality quiz app, and Facebook's lax policies allowed the app developer to access not just the quiz-takers' data but also the data of all their friends.

This data was allegedly used to build psychological profiles of voters and target them with political advertising during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit campaign.

The FTC found that Facebook had violated a 2012 consent decree that specifically required the company to get users' consent before sharing their data beyond their privacy settings. Despite this binding agreement, Facebook failed to vet third-party app developers, misrepresented the degree of access third parties had to user data, and did not adequately monitor compliance with its own policies.

The breach exposed the fundamental tension between Facebook's business model — which depends on collecting and monetizing user data — and user privacy expectations.