Meta’s former Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, finds herself embroiled in fresh legal trouble just days after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly blamed her for the company’s controversial policies. According to a New York Times report, Zuckerberg criticised Sandberg for Facebook’s corporate culture and inclusivity initiatives during a meeting with Stephen Miller, a senior advisor to former President Donald Trump.
Now, a Delaware judge has sanctioned Sandberg for allegedly deleting emails tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The allegations stem from a shareholder lawsuit accusing Meta (formerly Facebook) of violating user privacy and breaching fiduciary duties.
Shareholders claim Sandberg and Jeffrey Zients, another former executive, used personal email accounts to discuss matters related to the 2018 lawsuit, despite a court order prohibiting such actions. The plaintiffs also allege that Sandberg selectively deleted emails from these accounts.
The judge deemed these claims credible, highlighting inconsistencies in Sandberg’s responses to interrogatories and suggesting deliberate deletion of communications relevant to the case. As a consequence, the judge raised the standard of proof for Sandberg’s defense, requiring her to provide “clear and convincing” evidence—a higher threshold than the usual “preponderance” of evidence. Additionally, certain expenses were awarded to the plaintiffs.
A spokesperson for Sandberg dismissed the allegations, maintaining that “all work emails were preserved on Facebook’s servers” and asserting the claims are without merit.
Meta is facing scrutiny regarding its data practices. The company has previously been accused of violating a 2012 FTC order prohibiting unauthorised data collection. This culminated in a $5 billion fine in 2019, one of the largest penalties ever levied by the FTC, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The scandal broke in 2018, and it showed that Facebook allowed the collection of millions of personal data from its users for political advertising that led to Trump’s first electoral victory, amongst other manipulations by the digital consultants.
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