$5bn Facebook settlements approved

The Federal Trade Commission has approved an approximately $5bn settlement with Facebook, suggesting a lengthy investigation into the social media company's data privacy practices could be nearing an end. The commission voted 3-2 in favour of the settlement. CNN reports that the federal agency first confirmed it was investigating Facebook's privacy practices in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal more than a year ago. Since then, Facebook has also come under public scrutiny for offering more of its users' data to companies than it had previously admitted. Both incidents raised the prospect that Facebook had violated a 2011 consent agreement with the FTC which required the social network to have a ‘comprehensive privacy programme’ and to get the ‘express consent’ of users before sharing their data. While this settlement would mark by far the largest penalty against a tech company, far in excess of the $22.5m the FTC fined Google in 2012, investors nonetheless appeared to breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn't bigger.

Full CNN report