Facebook will reportedly be fined a record $5 billion over privacy mishaps
The Federal Trade Commission is said to have approved a settlement with Facebook.

BY QUEENIE WONG
JULY 12, 2019 5:22 PM PDT

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to hit Facebook with a record-setting $5 billion fine for its alleged privacy mishaps, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported that commissioners voted this week to approve the settlement with the social network.

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The settlement, which still has to be finalized by the US Justice Department's civil division, would be larger than the record-setting $22.5 million the FTC imposed on Google in 2012. The FTC and Facebook declined to comment on the report.

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Robert Weissman, the president of consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, said the reported settlement would let Facebook off the hook too easily.

"An effective settlement would have imposed not just a huge fine, but real restraints on the company going forward, structural reforms and substantive terms to protect user privacy," Weissman said in a statement. The FTC should have required Facebook to drop its plans to integrate its Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp services as part of the settlement, he said.

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