A Delaware judge has sanctioned Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former COO and board member, for allegedly deleting emails related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
The decision arises from a case Meta shareholders brought against Sandberg and another former Meta board member, Jeff Zients, late last year. The plaintiffs alleged that Sandberg and Zients used personal email accounts to communicate about issues relating to a 2018 shareholder lawsuit that accused Facebook leaders of violating the law — and their fiduciary duties — in failing to protect users’ privacy.
Plaintiffs also alleged that Sandberg and Zients deleted emails from their personal inboxes despite being instructed not to do so by a court. In a decision Tuesday, the Delaware judge overseeing the case found the accusations to be convincing.
“The defendants disclosed Sandberg’s personal Gmail account, maintained under a pseudonym, that she used to ‘communicate about matters potentially relevant to the claims and defenses in this action,’” the judge’s decision reads. “Counsel’s failure to give a straight answer in Sandberg’s interrogatory responses or when answering plaintiffs’ questions supports an inference that Sandberg was not using an auto-delete function but rather picking and choosing which emails to delete.”
In sanctioning Sandberg, the judge raised the legal standard for Sandberg’s affirmative defense, the defense based on facts other than those in support of the plaintiff’s claim. Now, Sandberg must prove her defense by “clear and convincing” evidence — not merely a “preponderance” of evidence, a burden that’s easier to clear.
The judge has also awarded plaintiffs certain expenses.
In a statement to TechCrunch via email, a spokesperson for Sandberg said that the plaintiffs’ claims “have no merit.”
“All work emails were preserved on Facebook’s servers,” the spokesperson said.
At the root of the courtroom battle are allegations that Meta officials violated a 2012 FTC order under which the company agreed to stop collecting and sharing Facebook users’ personal data without their consent. Facebook allegedly later sold the data to commercial partners, including political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, and allegedly removed disclosures from privacy settings that were required under the FTC’s order.
In 2019, Meta agreed to pay the FTC $5 billion to settle charges that the company violated the 2012 order. The company has also paid penalties from regulators in Europe.
Update: Added a statement from a spokesperson for Sandberg.
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Meta announced on Tuesday that users will soon be able to add their WhatsApp account to their Accounts Center, a hub where users can manage connected experiences across their Facebook, Instagram, and Meta Quest accounts.
With this integration, users will be able to cross-post their WhatsApp Status as Stories on Instagram and Facebook, getting rid of the need to post multiple times. It will also allow users to log in to multiple apps with the same account through the “Single Sign On” feature, which is an authentication option that allows you to do things like use your Facebook account information to log into Instagram.
Adding your WhatsApp account to Accounts Center is optional and off by default.
Meta notes that your WhatsApp messages and calls will remain end-to-end encrypted if you choose to connect your WhatsApp account to the hub.
Accounts Center, which is found in the Settings section of Meta’s apps, was first introduced in 2020 as a way to give users the ability to manage their connected experiences across the company’s services.
Meta plans to roll out additional functionality to Accounts Center, such as the option to manage avatars, Meta AI stickers, and Imagine Me creations.
The company says it’s rolling out the WhatsApp integration globally, but that it will take months for it to make it available to every user. When the integration is available, you’ll see the option in your WhatsApp settings. You may also see the integration when you try to take action across accounts, such as re-posting your Status to one of Meta’s other apps.
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Meta says it plans to keep its fact-checking program in place outside the U.S. for the time being, though it could eventually expand it elsewhere.
“We’ll see how that goes as we move it out over the years,” Meta’s head of global business Nicola Mendelsohn told Bloomberg in a report from Davos on Monday. “So nothing changing in the rest of the world at the moment, we are still working with those fact checkers around the world.”
Meta had put the fact-checking guardrails in place over several years in response to criticism over how its platform was used to spread misinformation. With a new administration entering the White House, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram announced earlier this month it would replace its fact-checkers with a community notes system, similar to what’s in place at Elon Musk’s X.
The company may face hurdles implementing its new program elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe, which has regulations such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) in place to curb the spread of deceptive content.
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Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook were all there.