FTC Finally makes it Official: Cambridge Analytica Deceived Facebook Users

The Federal Trade Commission has officially ruled that Cambridge Analytica deceived consumers through its data-gathering practices.

In July, the FTC accused the consulting company, as well as CEO Alexander Nix and app developer Aleksandr Kogan, of collecting data on tens of millions of Facebook users through a personality-testing app. The news, first revealed in 2018, upended Facebook and led to a congressional appearance by Mark Zuckerberg. The FTC previously settled the case with Nix and Kogan, and today voted unanimously to formally call the company’s practices “deceptive.”

In some ways, the vote, which took a full eighteen months to reach after the scandal first broke, was largely symbolic. Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy shortly after the scandal was first uncovered. And, as the FTC noted in its announcement , the company never responded to the agency’s legal complaint or request for a court judgment.  Under the terms of the FTC’s order issued, Cambridge Analytica is required to delete any data it collected on Facebook users, and to not make misrepresentations in the future about how it collects data.

Since the company is already defunct, those court demands appear to be moot. Still, while the agency’s order marks an end to the Cambridge Analytica story, the damage is done, the scandal’s effects are still being felt today, and lawmakers continue to grapple with questions about Facebook’s power and how to protect user privacy.

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