States agreed to ‘fully, finally, and forever’ release Meta from claims they didn’t know existed - with $459 million for Cambridge Analytica claims

I’m a political communication scholar who studies propaganda, surveillance and information warfare . My research helped expose the Cambridge Analytica scandal through U.K. newspaper The Guardian’s reporting on whistelblower accounts and the evidence I uncovered. That evidence was submitted to parliamentary and congressional investigations . I have followed the unfolding legal cases closely.

My takeaway from a decade of litigation is that Facebook has been penalized for misleading users and regulators about its data practices and its response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But I would contend that the company has largely escaped accountability for the underlying political exploitation of that data.

The failure to bring cases around harms may be partly due to earlier failures to fully investigate the data misuse.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election encompassed Cambridge Analytica. However, the committee stated in its final report that it “was unable to obtain the corporate communications of Cambridge Analytica or its parent company SCL Group, which had already been seized by U.K. authorities.”

The relevant U.K. authorities, the Information Commissioner’s Office, which governs data protection and took possession of Cambridge Analytica’s servers, told me in response to my 2021 Freedom of Information Act request that the Senate committee staff made initial inquiries to the office but appear not to have followed up with a formal request, “so no information sharing has taken place.” Without a formal request, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation lacked important data.

At the same time, the U.K. investigations of Cambridge Analytica’s use of personal data to manipulate voting behavior focused on the referendum of British voters over whether to leave the E.U., not events in the U.S.

A 2020 documentary film I advised as a researcher, “ People You May Know ,” raised questions about Cambridge Analytica’s work with an app marketed to American churches, called Gloo, that used Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook data-derived psychographic profiling in their communities. Evidence in the New Mexico case reinvigorates these questions about the full extent of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The judge in the case ruled Facebook knew that its own processes for investigating whether apps misused personal data were inadequate and that it could not enforce deletion of the data. The judge also concluded the company failed to notify users about thousands of applications associated with data misuse . Meta said it would appeal the decision.

Meta is also trying to close the door on further claims before they are litigated.