Facebook privacy practices the focus of $8 billion trial targeting Zuckerberg
Source: CNN Business
Published 8:09 AM EDT, Wed July 16, 2025
CNN — An $8 billion trial by Meta Platforms shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg and other current and former company leaders kicks off on Wednesday over claims that they illegally harvested the data of Facebook users in violation of a 2012 agreement with the US Federal Trade Commission.
Jeffrey Zients, White House chief of staff under President Joe Biden and a Meta director for two years starting in May 2018, is expected to be one of the first witnesses to take the stand in the non-jury trial before Kathaleen McCormick, chief judge of the Delaware Chancery Court.
The case will feature testimony from Zuckerberg and other billionaire defendants including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, venture capitalist and board member Marc Andreessen and former board members Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies co-founder, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix. A lawyer for the defendants, who have denied the allegations, declined to comment.
The case began in 2018, following revelations that data from millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s successful US presidential campaign in 2016. The FTC fined Facebook $5 billion in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, saying the company had violated a 2012 agreement with the FTC to protect user data. Shareholders want the defendants to reimburse Meta for the FTC fine and other legal costs, which the plaintiffs estimate total more than $8 billion.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/16/tech/facebook-privacy-practices-trial-zuckerberg
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away from society? Has this to do with international law if the defendants have global reach? Who exactly are the plaintiffs? Just different classes of shareholders? From just the US or from different countries? I have so many questions... 
It just seems weird (probably due to my ignorance of corporate structures) to see the named defendants as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Marc Andreesen, Peter Thiel, and Reed Hastings, owners of separate corporations. I wonder what the ramifications of this trial might be for tech, or government, and even law firms. I also wonder if media are keeping an eye on this trial.
Thanks for posting this puzzling but somehow important news.
and found the old OP that first announced this suit - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142226780
That pointed to a BBC article - https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46627133
which in turn referenced a WaPo article here - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/19/dc-attorney-general-sues-facebook-over-alleged-privacy-violations-cambridge-analytica-scandal/
WaPo linked to a copy of the original suit (PDF) - https://oag.dc.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/Facebook-Complaint.pdf
I expect it has been updated/modified since but at least this is a start! 
ETA - have to find the shareholder suit!
Reading the Plaintiffs (two pension funds and an individual?) Preliminary Statement made me recall that around 2022 I got two $200+ checks from the 2012 lawsuit against FB's lying about privacy settings & selling data to third party app developers.
(No lawyer but I still like reading filings. They feel like a kind of citizen's homework assignment.)
