Secret Zuckerberg Email Cache Found, Could Be Disaster for Facebook
Life sure has been difficult for Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg lately.
Or, at least as difficult as life can be for a man who can lose $660 million in net worth and still be worth billions.
Zuckerberg and his monolithic Facebook has been under fire for all sorts of reasons lately. Data breaches, ideologically driven censorship and congressional hearings have all plagued the tech titan in recent years.
But perhaps the most enduring controversy that hit Facebook involved British analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which was able to access and utilize personal details of at least 87 million users. All of that personal data was then used to aid political campaigns, including Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid in 2016.
Suffice to say, people were livid with Facebook.
In turn, Zuckerberg has been scrambling with attempts at widespread damage control as his company faced unprecedented backlash.
Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is back in full-force and the details paint a grim picture.
According to multiple outlets, including CNN and Daily Mail UK, the British Parliament has obtained a set of internal Facebook documents that the company has allegedly fought to keep the public from knowing about.
Now I don’t like peddling conspiracy theories, but generally speaking, people don’t try to hide something if said thing is good. And a company like Facebook needs all the good publicity it can get right now.
So right off the bat, it’s readily apparent that Facebook is hiding something bad.
The cache of documents purportedly contain troves of information, including “claims about the company’s alleged disregard for user privacy, and the claim that Zuckerberg devised a plan that forced Facebook’s rivals, or potential rivals, out of business,” per CNN.
This whole ordeal stems from a lawsuit filed by tech company Six4Three in California.
“We allege that Facebook itself is the biggest violator of data misuse in the history of the software industry,” Six4Three owner Ted Kramer told CNN. Kramer’s legal team originally unearthed these documents.
The British Parliament was able to obtain the document days before a hearing in London, ominously being called the “International Grand Committee on Disinformation.”
Interestingly, this sets up a situation where Parliament could make these documents public while the United States wants the documents to remain private.
“The San Mateo Superior Court in California ordered the documents remain under seal,” CNN notes. Parliament reportedly demanded Kramer hand over these documents while he was on a business trip to London, and made this request through their “serjeant at arms” according to Daily Mail. Kramer initially resisted, but eventually acquiesced to Parliament.
Zuckerberg, whom CNN reports was asked to attend this meeting, opted to send one of his deputies.
Perhaps he wants to avoid another public shaming like the one he suffered at the hands of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Full exchange between Senator @tedcruz and Mark Zuckerberg where Senator Ted Cruz questions the Facebook CEO about the censorship of Conservatives on his platform. pic.twitter.com/c6d7jwDbnJ
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) April 10, 2018
But even if Zuckerberg is able to avoid such public shaming, things aren’t looking particularly rosy for his company.
Again, I don’t want to speculate too wildly on what exactly these documents could contain. But if it’s as damning as Kramer is making them out to be, things look like they’ll only get worse for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.
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