Finally. Here in SEC docs is what Facebook has painfully avoided public knowing and press has mostly missed documenting. Facebook data was ****SOLD**** to Cambridge Analytica. Can everyone please now say that Facebook personal data was sold rather than captured, transferred, etc?
"Moreover, when asked by reporters in 2017 about its investigation into the Cambridge Analytica matter, Facebook falsely claimed the company found no evidence of wrongdoing, thereby reinforcing the misleading statements in its periodic filings."
"Facebook did not disclose..,.until March 16, 2018, when the company— for the first time—publicly acknowledged on its website that it had learned of the violation of its policy in 2015. The price of Facebook shares declined substantially following the company’s disclosure."
2 things here. I believe SEC report documents Zuckerberg's misleading testimony about how diligently they reacted upon press. This is one of Facebook's greatest deceptions in intentions with the cover-up. ps CA certification wasn't similar to Kogan's.
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson This begs the question what was the purpose of the 2012 FTC Consent Decree and the audits being done every other year by PWC??? 7 years and this is how this plays out?
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson OMG, THERE IT IS. The FTC settlement is a distraction. The key report is the SEC report. Attempted whistleblowers knew prior to Guardian report, they were ignored and Facebook continued to take $ from "sketchy (to say the least) data modeling company” for political advertising.
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson I don't say this lightly. Compare this answer by CEO Zuckerberg to @USRepMikeDoyle to the relevant section of the SEC settlement. I would have examined the stock sales of every insider aware during this period including officers/directors.
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson@USRepMikeDoyle Woah this was 12 days before US elections. Facebook employees knew stuff was going on but their DC office appears to have frozen them. Consumers were deceived and harmed through their personal data likely in order to protect Facebook's reputation and share price.
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson@USRepMikeDoyle "Although several employees in Facebook’s legal, policy, and communications groups who attended these meetings during the relevant period were aware of the researcher’s improper transfer of data to Cambridge, that incident was never discussed."
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson@USRepMikeDoyle "Facebook knew, or should have known, that its Risk Factor disclosures in its annual reports on Form 10-K for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017, ...as incorporated into its Form S-8 registration statements, were materially misleading."
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson@USRepMikeDoyle "During the relevant period, Facebook received approximately $29m in cash proceeds from the exercise of employee stock options. Facebook also granted restricted stock units to more than 17,000 new employees..."
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson@USRepMikeDoyle Here is the part where Facebook (after covering up incident for nearly 2 1/2 years) burnt The New York Times and Guardian by preempting their reporting once they had dutifully come to Facebook for comment on their findings.
@SenWhitehouse@SenBillNelson@USRepMikeDoyle@AllMattNYT@carolecadwalla by the way, this is the "certification" between the CEO of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. The red arrow is mine pointing to language which makes this agreement almost meaningless beyond the fact Facebook didn't sign it.
@AGKarlRacine Time to bump a few important docs back up for a reality check. SEC complaint says Kogan told Facebook in June 2016 he had sold 30 million underlying records to a political operative. (1) seems obvious Facebook accelerated its cover-up at that point after 6+ months of deflection.
@AGKarlRacine Interesting timing as Kogan told FB this in June 2016 and he then signed an agreement with Facebook on June 24 which happened to be the result date of the Brexit Referendum. It was quite an agreement to review when it surfaced at @CommonsCMS. p19-33 parliament.uk/documents/comm…
@AGKarlRacine@CommonsCMS at minimum, this is why Facebook's top EU policy exec testifying in Feb 2018 CA didn't have FB data 1 month before global press attention was beyond ridiculous having been told in June 2016 30mm records had been sold to CA. @carolecadwalla is right, we prob should say he lied.
@AGKarlRacine@CommonsCMS@carolecadwalla side note, the May 2018 @CommonsCMS correspondence was a valuable written exchange. Source of many new details and some of their best obfuscations. It came during time of pressure for Zuckerberg to testify. He ultimately danced through Brussels instead. parliament.uk/documents/comm…
@AGKarlRacine@CommonsCMS@carolecadwalla and routing this thread back to another old one where I list a lot of the obfuscations... and probably connect to another thread of evidence. my timeline is a Facebook rabbit hole. So were their practices.
@AGKarlRacine@CommonsCMS@carolecadwalla Remember when Facebook famously went dark for five days after Cambridge Analytica scandal broke globally? I'm rewatching CEO Zuckerberg's first highly promoted CNN exclusive interview to compare to the SEC report yesterday. I've cued the spot for you.
@AGKarlRacine@CommonsCMS@carolecadwalla Put aside that Zuckerberg testified under oath and answers here that Facebook first learned from The Guardian report, I'm having trouble with "as far as we understood around the time of that episode there was no data out there." Yellow highlights are mine.
@AGKarlRacine@CommonsCMS@carolecadwalla Now reviewing Kogan's testimony where he testified to @SenJohnThune:
- Facebook visited Kogan in Sept 2015 and were told about his selling of data.
- His "equal partner" disclosed what they were doing during his job interview with Facebook (note: he was hired 11/9/15)
@AGKarlRacine@CommonsCMS@carolecadwalla@SenJohnThune just in, Facebook response to DC request, in light of SEC filing, to unseal internal emails showing FB had awareness of Cambridge Analytica problems earlier than Zuckerberg told Congress. When reports of emails surfaced, FB said they were about a different "scraping" incident.
+1 for lawmakers not willing to get rolled, misled or lied to by Facebook. Parliament asks for an explanation by Aug 12th why last week’s “SEC Complaint seemingly directly contradicts oral and written evidence”
New update from Facebook v DC. They're still working incredibly hard to keep internal email chain sealed which reports to show prior knowledge of Cambridge Analytica. In worst case, it may also lead to perjury or securities issues for Facebook officer(s).
Woah. Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook, just sanctioned by Delaware judge for deleting emails ahead of trial this spring. This is the state pension shareholder case alleging the company overpaid the FTC and SEC in $5B+ settlements in order to protect Zuckerberg. /1
Long after the books had been inspected and many lawsuits had played out, it was disclosed last year she had a personal Gmail account under a pseudonym that may have been used for relevant communications. /2
The Judge here calls her a "high sophisticated individual." He probably doesn't know about the 2018 NYT report on how she carved out these issues in her Senate Intel testimony or how their lawyers were sanctioned on related discovery in California. /3
wow. This AI lawsuit against Facebook keeps getting worse as they reluctantly unseal documents on Court orders.
Check out this allegation. Not only two hrs before discovery cut-off but the Friday before we now know Mark Zuckerberg was deposed... /1
Here is the bit from the newly filed and now unsealed third amended complaint. Allegations here Facebook used torrenting to download a pirated dataset to train LLaMA thereby also "seeding" pirated content globally. This is a BFD. /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
In fact, it can be criminal so this count is in the third amended complaint and the state attorney general (hello, @AGRobBonta) should note these allegations here. As it relates to this case, it may also break their privilege claims since it alleged to further a crime. /3
wow. Upon Court order, incriminating exhibits were unsealed at 3:30am in an AI lawsuit against Meta. Once past a 'fake privilege,' it appears Zuckerberg approved the use of a highly controversial, pirated dataset.
Note OpenAI, too? AI companies with no ethics or guardrails. /1
Here they acknowledge risk in media coverage, and massive EU fines, if "we have used a dataset we know to be pirated." So then you ask yourself the question, did they actually know it was pirated and use it? I uploaded docs - . /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
To that question, here is how the internal project manager describes the dataset. Note the line (these are all my yellow highlights), "when sourced from copyrighted materials without the permission of copyright holders." /3
woah. This Friday? Too much moving on court dockets so I will surface for you. This matters, in this mega-Facebook case, as highly respected Chenault was Chairman of Facebook's board during its biggest scandals. WSJ reported he left board after disagreements with Zuckerberg. /1
Here is the report on his departure, it includes reports of disagreements with Peter Thiel, too, over elections policies and "clashes" over moderation policies.
Btw, highly relevant to the last 24hrs of news. /2 wsj.com/articles/chena…
Moving on, Zuckerberg has also been noticed for deposition after "alleged wrongdoing on a truly colossal scale." He was already deposed last month in Hawaii for 7hrs. I would expect SEC closely compares transcripts to their 2019 depo which @zamaan_qureshi managed to unseal. /3
Here is how NYT reported it in the complaint. Google and Facebook suggested it was misrepresented. Their proxies have misled public into thinking it was dismissed from lawsuit despite Google's CEO being deposed about it only months ago. /3 nytimes.com/2021/01/17/tec…
woah. ~300 redacted summary judgment google exhibits posted in TX. I've uploaded all. most eye-popping - we finally get Google-Facebook contract (aka Jedi Blue) alleged as bid rigging (yes, press was misled, it's still part of the claims). /1
If you need a definition for Match Rate, Google and Facebook include it with example of using the "encrypted blob" on mobile, feels very much like a fingerprint y'all. Here is the full contract, don't sleep on section dealing with monopoly enforcement. /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
There are a ton of new exhibits from discovery with similar themes of Google secretly using projects to manipulate its black box auctions. "The first rule of Bernanke is we don't talk about Bernanke." /3