Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission have officially reached a settlement agreement over a nearly 18-month investigation into the social media giant's practice of sharing user data with third parties without their consent.
The settlement, which had been previously reported and expected, was announced Wednesday morning. Facebook will pay a $5 billion fine to the government ー the largest privacy-related fine and largest fine of a tech company ever, by an order of magnitude. The company will also agree to have CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally "certify" every quarter that Facebook is in compliance with new privacy provisions imposed by the FTC. Facebook will create a new committee as part of its board to oversee those compliance efforts. If Zuckerberg gave false certifications, he could be subject to criminal and civil penalties, according to the FTC's statement.
Facebook does not admit guilt to any missteps as part of the deal.
In a statement, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said the agreement presents a "sharper turn toward privacy, on a different scale than anything we’ve done in the past.” The company also announced a separate, far smaller, settlement with the SEC over a different investigation into its handling of user data. That settlement included a $100 million fine.
For Facebook ($FB) ー which saw its shares go up after the first reports of the record penalty ー it remains unclear how, or if, the settlement will substantively change its business model, which relies mainly on serving advertisements based on the mountains of data it collects from its 2+ billion users.
In a sign of Facebook's scale and intertwining services, the settlement comes the same week as a new report found that the company discovered a bug in its Messenger Kids platform that allowed strangers to add young children to group messages without their parents' knowledge. Facebook publicly disclosed that bug only when contacted by The Verge.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
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.
