Meta: Meta’s former COO barred from deleting emails
New Delhi| Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer (COO) of social media giant Meta, has been punished by the court for deleting emails related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy case. It is noteworthy that Sheryl Sandberg was asked to keep those emails safe. Delaware court judge Vice Chancellor Travis Laster said evidence showed Sandberg created a personal email account under the assumed name and pre-empted some of those emails, which were likely linked to stakeholders in the case.
Sheryl Sandberg’s problems increased due to ban
The ban will now make it difficult to present his case to Sheryl Sandberg and avoid liability in the eight-day, non-jury trial in April. The judge also ordered Sherrill to pay the expenses related to the ban proposal made by the shareholders. However, Sandberg has already removed some emails from his Gmail account, so it is feared that important and sensitive information related to the case has already been lost. There has been no comment yet from Meta or Sandberg on the court’s ban on Sheryl.
This case dates back to the year 2018, when Facebook was accused of allowing the data of millions of users to be accessed by Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica is a political consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidency in the year 2016. The company’s directors and executives were accused of using users and harming investors in violation of a year-2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission.
Stakeholders also alleged that the company’s board bargained to pay a large $5 billion fine to the Federal Trade Commission in the year 2019 so that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg would not have personal accountability. According to court records, Zuckerberg is expected to appear for the second time before the start of the trial. Stakeholders also asked Judge Loster to punish Jeffrey Zients, who was former President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and who used and deleted personal emails while on Meta’s board. However, the judge said that Zients had joined the Meta board after the Cambridge Analytica case and was not a company official.
