The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly voted to approve a fine of roughly $5 billion with Facebook following an investigation into the social media company’s mishandling of users’ personal information.
The panel, which enforces privacy regulations in the U.S., voted 3-2 along party lines to back the pact, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The FTC’s three Republicans reportedly supported the settlement while Democrats opposed it.
The dispute is now headed to the Justice Department, which is typically tasked with finalizing the deal, sources said.
Facebook said in April it planned to be hit with a fine of up to $5 billion, which stemmed from a nonpublic investigation the FTC opened in 2018. That investigation launched after it was revealed Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, improperly harvested data from 87 million Facebook users through a quiz app that collected information from users and their friends.
The Menlo Park, California-based company, however, has since come under additional scrutiny related to privacy lapses, which were included in the FTC’s investigation.
The commission’s investigation involved whether Facebook’s breaches violated the terms of a 2011 consent decree, in which the tech giant had to better its policies regarding user privacy.
