How Many Billions Would It Take to Hold Meta Accountable? Meta got hit this week with its biggest fine yet, the latest in a mounting pile of court-ordered payments. Earlier this week, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion fine for violating consumer protection laws dating back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. A quick recap of the case: Filed in 2021, the suit alleged that the company violated the state's Unfair Practices Act by lying to Meta users about the way it handled their data. In September, a jury ruled in favor of the state.

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The more data you can feed a machine learning algorithm, the better it can spot patterns, make decisions, predict behaviours, personalise content, diagnose medical conditions, power smart everything, detect cyber threats and fraud; indeed, AI and data make for a happy partnership: "The algorithm without data is blind. Data without algorithms is dumb." Not everyone wants to share, at least, not under the current rules of digital engagement. Some individuals disengage entirely, becoming digital hermits. Others proceed with caution, using privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to plug the digital leak: a kind karate chop, digital self defense -- they don't trust website privacy notices, they verify them with tools like DuckDuckGo's Privacy Grade extension and soon, machine-readable privacy notices.

Even though artificial intelligence can bring about a substantial positive impact in many areas of our lives, AI's inappropriate and unethical use has become a big concern in recent years. During my investigation of artificial intelligence in business and in societies in the last five years, I have been negatively surprised by the quantity of wrong and unethical usage of AI worldwide. Several big technology companies have been involved in scandals by allowing wrong and unethical use of data and artificial intelligence in their platforms. The most well-known is the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook gave access to sensitive user data of 87 million user to consultant firm Cambridge Analytica which used AI algorithms to micro-target their political ads in the 2016 US elections.

These are troubled times for artificial intelligence developers: never has there been such potential in the field of machine learning, which relies on users' personal information for training--however, data regulation and public perception of digital privacy have never been sterner, either. The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal was a watershed moment: personal data from 87 million Facebook users were covertly used for political campaigning. This event, and the frequent news of security breaches in social networks, in operating systems and in cloud servers have eroded public trust. Earlier this year, Google admitted that its employees listen to recordings of conversations held between clients and the company's smart speaker. Technologists are on a quest for privacy-protecting artificial intelligence, which has led to the proposal of new techniques like federated learning.

Cambridge Analytica may have become the byword for a scandal, but it's not entirely clear that anyone knows exactly what that scandal is. It's more like toxic word association: "Facebook", "data", "harvested", "weaponised", "Trump" and, in this country, most controversially, "Brexit". It was a media firestorm that's yet to be extinguished, a year on from whistleblower Christopher Wylie's revelations in the Observer and the New York Times about how the company acquired the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users in order to target them in political campaigns. This week sees the release of The Great Hack, a Netflix documentary that is the first feature-length attempt to gather all the strands of the affair into some sort of narrative – though it is one contested even by those appearing in the film. "This is not about one company," Julian Wheatland, the ex-chief operating officer of Cambridge Analytica, claims at one point. "This technology is going on unabated and will continue to go on unabated.[…] There was always going to be a Cambridge Analytica. It just sucks to me that it's Cambridge Analytica."

Facebook's business practices dominated much of the year's biggest talking points, alongside new data regulations coming into force in Europe and the continuing rise of Fortnite as a global phenomenon. Facebook came under intense scrutiny during 2018, as the company's approach to data privacy and its handling of personal information was put under the spotlight. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed not only how data could be scraped from Facebook users but also the flaws in the company's own data policies, sparked much of the scrutiny. Despite several appearances in front of lawmakers in the US and European Union, Mark Zuckerberg and his firm failed to satisfy many with questions over how the social network operates and has seen its public trust and even its share value plummet. It also sparked an ongoing battle with a House of Commons select committee, which looks set to continue into next year.

Even for a company as serially scandalous as Facebook, it's been a bad week for the social network. Separate investigations revealed that Facebook gave more than 150 firms access to people's private messages, while also making it impossible for users to avoid location-based ads. After months of fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, US prosecutors also finally got around to filing a lawsuit against Facebook for its data sharing practices. Individually, none of these would likely be enough to bring Facebook down, but some experts believe that, collectively, this could signal the end for the internet behemoth. David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design in New York, said this week may finally have dealt Facebook its "knockout" blow.

In this file photo taken on March 21, 2018 A laptop showing the Facebook logo is held alongside a Cambridge Analytica sign at the entrance to the building housing the offices of Cambridge Analytica, in central London. LONDON – Britain's Information Commissioner has slapped Facebook with a fine of 500,000 pounds ($644,000) – the maximum possible – for its behavior in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The ICO's investigation found that between 2007 to 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by giving app developers access to their information without informed consent. The fine was the maximum allowed under the law at the time the breach occurred. Had the scandal taken place after new EU data protection rules went into effect, the amount would have been far higher.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. The latest chapter in Facebook's data woes involves a quiz app that, until as recently as June, exposed the information of 120 million people who just wanted to know whether they were Cinderella or Elsa. According to De Ceukelaire, beginning as early as the end of 2016, NameTests collected Facebook users' data when they opted to take a quiz, such as "Which Disney Princess Are You?" The app then displayed that data--including names, birthdays, photos, and friends lists--in Javascript files easily accessible by third-party websites. De Ceukelaire writes, "Depending on what quizzes you took, the javascript could leak your Facebook ID, first name, last name, language, gender, date of birth, profile picture, cover photo, currency, devices you use, when your information was lasted updated, your posts and status, your photos and your friends." De Ceukelaire says he "would be surprised if nobody else found this earlier," since the flaw was "really easy to spot," but NameTests said it found no evidence of abuse.