URL: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-investors-zuckerberg-square-off-100345201.html
Mark Zuckerberg is expected to appear as a star witness in an unusual $8 billion trial that kicks off this week at which the Meta CEO is accused of operating Facebook as an illegal enterprise that allowed users' data to be harvested without their consent.
Shareholders of Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, sued Zuckerberg and other current and former company leaders, saying they continually violated a 2012 agreement between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission to protect users' data.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg are alleged to have knowingly caused the company to violate the law. While Delaware law protects directors and officers for bad business decisions, it does not protect them from illegal ones, even if they are profitable.
The shareholders in pretrial court papers said they can prove that after the 2012 agreement, Facebook continued deceptive privacy practices, at the direction of Zuckerberg. The defendants said the evidence will show that the company built a team to oversee privacy and hired an outside compliance firm and that Facebook was a victim of Cambridge Analytica's "studied deceit."