Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives face allegations in Delaware’s Chancery Court that they failed to enforce a 2012 FTC privacy order

Forbes

Mark Zuckerberg Goes On Trial Today In $8 Billion Meta Privacy Lawsuit—What To Know.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former COO Sheryl Sandberg and other billionaires tied to Facebook will go on trial in Delaware on Wednesday, as a week-long trial determines whether the company’s past and present leadership will be forced to pay $8 billion in damages for knowingly violating a privacy agreement, which led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Zuckerberg, Sandberg and other Facebook leadership knowingly didn’t comply with that agreement, the plaintiffs allege, as they still allowed third-party apps to collect app users’ data about their friends and those friends’ personal information, even if the friends didn’t consent to using the app themselves.

That issue came to light with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which millions of users’ Facebook data was harvested through a third-party app, and that data was allegedly used to influence major political events such as Brexit and the 2016 election.

Facebook shareholders sued the company’s leadership in 2018, alleging they knowingly violated an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission by sharing data about users’ friends with third-party apps without those friends’ knowledge.

Facebook, which rebranded to Meta in 2021, signed a consent order with the FTC in 2012, in which the company agreed to create a “comprehensive privacy program” to address privacy concerns arising from its products.

The trial begins Wednesday in Delaware Chancery Court—as Meta is incorporated in the state—and will last for eight days. There’s no jury in the trial and the judge will issue the verdict in the case.

That will likely come out in the weeks or months following the trial, rather than when the trial wraps up. Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Thiel, Andreessen and Hastings are all expected to testify, according to Reuters.