Electronic Privacy Information Center is not happy with the Federal Trade Commission's decision to give Facebook a $5 billion fine for years of privacy violations.
The consumer privacy group based in Washington is asking a federal district court to intervene in the settlement. The FTC formally announced the $5 billion fine — the second-largest fine levied by the agency — on Wednesday, July 24.
The settlement was the culmination of a long investigation into privacy breaches, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal that harvested data from up to 87 million profiles on Facebook.
The FTC Goes Too Easy On Facebook
EPIC said that the settlement is not "adequate, reasonable, or appropriate." The group said that the settlement would extinguish the existing 26,000 consumer complaints against the social media company currently pending at the FTC since 2011.
"The proposed order wipes Facebook's slate clean without Facebook even having to admit guilt for its privacy violations," reads the complaint, which was reviewed by The New York Times.
The privacy group has also lodged several complaints against Facebook over user privacy concerns.
EPIC also wants the court to see if the scope of the settlement can be broadened to include other issues such as the bug found in the Messenger Kids app that allowed users under the age of 13 to chat with adults or the widespread use of facial recognition without the user's consent.
The challenge was filed at a federal district court in Washington, D.C. on Friday, July 26. Aside from the $5 billion fine, the settlement also forces the $571 billion company to agree to a series of new privacy restrictions.
Facebook Unaffected After FTC Settlement
Several other experts agreed that the FTC settlement was merely a slap on the wrist to Facebook. As The Guardian noted, Facebook will only need 27 days to earn and pay $5 billion. The fine would not even make a dent.
On Wednesday, after the official announcement of the settlement, Facebook's stock price surged. The company also posted better-than-expected second-quarter results, reporting a $16.9 billion revenue and user growth despite scrutiny and privacy concerns.
"Privacy has always been important to the services we provide, and now it's even more central to our future vision for social networking," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. "It's critical that we get this right, and we're going to build it into all of our systems. It's going to take time to do this properly, and I expect it will take us longer to ship new products, especially while we're getting this up and running."
Facebook currently has 1.59 billion daily active users.
