The Federal Trade Commission officially launched an investigation into Facebook’s data practices Monday.
The agency is exploring whether the social media platform violated an agreement from back in 2011 by failing to abide by its privacy promises.
But Axios managing editor Kim Hart says the matter isn’t cut and dry.
“Here’s the problem -- there are no real rules on the books that dictate how data from a company like Facebook can be shared or sold or used,” she said in an interview on Cheddar.
“As long as they are abiding by the privacy policies that they put out and the privacy standards that they tell consumers that they’re going to use, they’re in pretty good stead.”
Seven years ago, Facebook reached a settlement with the FTC over allegedly tricking users into believing that they could keep their data on the platform private when it was in fact open to third party apps.
Under that agreement, Facebook was required to “obtain periodic assessments of its privacy practices by independent, third-party auditors for the next 20 years,” according to an official statement from the FTC.
The increased scrutiny comes at a time when Facebook’s popularity is waning. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that just 41 percent of Americans trust the company will protect their privacy, compared to 66 percent who trust Amazon and 62 percent for Google.
A separate Axios study found that Facebook’s favorability fell by 28 points in just the past five months.
“It’s a pretty stunning drop that we saw,” said Hart. “It fell twice as much as the other tech giants did.”
This onslaught of negative coverage comes after news that data company Cambridge Analytica harvested data on tens of millions of Americans off of Facebook without their permission. It then sold that information to President Trump’s campaign team in 2016.
Since the revelation, Facebook shares have fallen by 13 percent. Initial news of the FTC investigation sent shares down an additional 6 percent Monday, but they recovered for a slight gain by the end of the day.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebook-under-fire-why-its-favorability-is-plummeting).
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
