Facebook Admits It Is Expecting a Multibillion-Dollar Fine

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Mark Zuckerberg after meeting with politicians in Europe.Niall Carson/PA Wire

Facebook is expecting to be hit with an unprecedented $3-$5 billion federal fine.

The revelation that the company anticipates such a massive fine, the result of a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the company’s privacy practices, came in an investor report released Wednesday. The fine would be the largest ever levied against a tech company by the FTC.

“The matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome,” Facebook wrote in the quarterly earnings report where it disclosed the figure.

Facebook has been in negotiations with the FTC for months over the commission’s claims that the social media company violated a 2011 consent decree brokered with the FTC following an earlier investigation, in which the company made agreements not to violate user privacy.

In 2018, Facebook faced renewed criticism over its privacy practices after Cambridge Analytica, a British political research firm, was revealed to have improperly obtained data on tens of millions of its users. Later that year in March, the FTC confirmed it had opened an investigation into Facebook’s data privacy practices.

The company has received significant scrutiny from the public and lawmakers since the scandal came to light. Lawmakers in Congress and in parliaments around the world have hauled in Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to testify about how the company treats user data. Many of the legislators have floated new privacy legislation to protect user data.