The Federal Trade Commission has granted final approval of its settlement with Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix and app developer Aleksandr Kogan.

The vote was 5-0.

In an opinion released two weeks ago, the FTC said Cambridge Analytica "engaged in deceptive practices, in violation of the FTC Act--to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting."

The FTC had filed an administrative complaint against Cambridge Analytica and related execs for their role in the scandal, over which Facebook was fined $5 billion by the FTC.

The order "prohibits Cambridge Analytica from making misrepresentations about the extent to which it protects the privacy and confidentiality of personal information, as well as its participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework and other similar regulatory or standard-setting organizations."

The Federal Trade Commission has put its official stamp on what most already knew: data company Cambridge Analytica "engaged in deceptive practices, in violation of the FTC Act--to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting."

It was already established that they had harvested the info, but the issued an opinion and final order Friday (Dec. 6)--the vote was 5-0--finding that the company had engaged in deceptive practices by doing so, as well as relating to its participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework--the FTC said it claimed to be eligible for that privacy safe harbor when its certification had lapsed. 

The FTC had filed an administrative complaint against Cambridge Analytica and related execs for their role in the scandal, over which Facebook was fined $5 billion by the FTC, though its critics said even that whopping-sounding figure was a slap on a very big wrist.  

Related: Sen. Wyden Says Zuckerberg Should Be Liable for Privacy Violations

Then-CEO Alexander Nix and app developer Aleksandr Kogan settled with the FTC, but the company, which went bankrupt, did not respond to either the complaint or a motion for summary judgment, said the FTC. 

The order "prohibits Cambridge Analytica from making misrepresentations about the extent to which it protects the privacy and confidentiality of personal information, as well as its participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework and other similar regulatory or standard-setting organizations. In addition, the company is required to continue to apply Privacy Shield protections to personal information it collected while participating in the program (or to provide other protections authorized by law), or return or delete the information. It also must delete the personal information that it collected..."

In a bit of irony, the FTC said at the end of the announced order that to learn more about consumer protections, one thing the public could do was "Like the FTC on Facebook."

WASHINGTON — Here are just some of the issues raised last week as the capital and the nation focused on how better to protect online users' data in a world of almost universal collection and sharing. 

If social media sites can't figure out how to self-regulate, or are unable to do so, Washington has made clear it will step in.

Related: Specter of D.C. Crackdown on Edge Looms [subscription required]

• Does there need to be a government digital consumer protection agency with powers to regulate privacy?
• How can social media sites in general balance the need to weed out terrorists, hate speech, and threats of violence without straying into censorship of non-threatening speech?
• Do consumers have a fundamental right to control their online data and can that co-exist with the social media business model?
• How will new European Union General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) going into effect next month dovetail with U.S. policies? (Facebook, for example, has pledged to provide those data control tools and options to its U.S. users.)
• If social media platforms are expected to police their content, as legislators have made clear, who decides what gets blocked, and how is that decision made?

Related: Pai Says He's Unsure Whether Social Media Benefits Outweigh Downside

• Should the edge be more regulated, or internet service providers be less regulated? Or do both need more “regulatory motivation” to protect privacy?
• Should all the members of the virtuous internet circle be mandated to require opt-in consent from users to collect their data, to share their data, to sell it to third parties, or any or all of the above?
• Who owns and controls our online personas, and what control do we have over them?
• How do Facebook and other social media define hate speech and is there a bias against conservative and religious speech given Silicon Valley's liberal bent?
• How can social media sites protect against being weaponized in election meddling, or is a site like Facebook too big (billions of communications per day) to prevent such weaponization?

Related: Murdoch Says Facebook Should Pay for Trusted News

• Will opt-in restrictions on data sharing with marketers threaten the ad-supported model that allows for free online content, and will that need to be a trade-off for securing users' control over their data?
• Has Facebook become a "self-regulated superstructure for political discourse," and is that a good or bad thing?
• Is there tension, as lawmakers saw it, between the business interests of the edge and users’ interests, or between users' desire to share info with various apps and their desire, on the other hand, to "lock down" that info? Zuckerberg suggested it was more the latter.
• Did the Cambridge Analytica incident violate the 2011 Federal Trade Commission privacy settlement? (If so, then Facebook could face hefty fines.)
• Is Facebook a publisher, a media company, a tech company or some amalgam of all of those?
• If Congress concludes that edge providers should be regulated like a utility, does that mean ISPs will be reclassified under Title II of the Communications Act, alongside websites?

Mark Zuckerberg continued to get a Hill hammering Wednesday (April 11) as the Facebook CEO continued to apologize for not sufficiently monitoring the social media site for bad actors and pledged to do better.

Apology was not accepted in most cases, and self-regulation appeared not to be the leading candidate for preventing future issues with protecting user data from abuse and letting them know what didn't qualify as abuse.

The hearing was still going on, but the battle lines were clear over issues including trust, potential bias, compliance with government consent decrees, and who owns online content. And while there was praise for Facebook as a vehicle for communications and social change and Zuckerberg as a great American success story, and employer of constituents, there were far more brickbats than bouquets.

Zuckerberg said it was not enough to give people a voice; the company needed to make sure those voices were used for good. He said it would take time to make the necessary steps to protect users information that Facebook has not been protecting sufficiently, and many months to investigate other apps.

Facebook will likely have to succeed in doing that to avoid new regs on edge providers, though he has also expressed a willingness to be regulated, so long as it is the "right kind" of regulation, signaling Wednesday he thought that was inevitable, which could explain why he was getting ahead of that by talking about how they should be regulated, not whether.

Following Zuckerberg's grilling Tuesday before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees, it was the House Energy & Commerce Committee's turn to train the spotlight on Facebook.

House E&C Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) has said he prefers deregulating ISPs to adding new regs to the edge, but has clearly not ruled that out, nor had many of the other members of the committee if Wednesday's hearing was any gauge.

"Facebook has grown," but it may not have matured," Walden told Zuckerberg. "It may have moved too fast and broken too many things," he added hearkening to Facebook's original slogan.

Walden said Facebooks breach of trust was troubling, and that breach "must have consequences." But he still entertained the possibility that the consequences could be the company cleaning up its own act.

Related: Senators Introduce Opt-In Edge Privacy Bill

Ranking member Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) hammered Facebook for vacuuming up data without protecting it. He cited Zuckerberg's answer to the Senators that he was not opposed to regulation. Pallone said there needed to be such comprehensive regulation. He said Facebook had allowed itself to be used as a tool to "hack our Democracy."

He said the company was either blind to the red flags or ignored them. Either way, he suggested, Congress needs act.

He also called for further hearings with other edge providers, ISPs, app developers and others Both Walden and Pallone pointed to the good that Facebook has done, jobs, including in Walden's district; helping motivate pro-social movements, and become integral in the daily lives of the nation.

Asked if Facebook was a media company, Zuckerberg said no, he thought of it as a tech company. He said Facebook has a responsibility over its content, which is what he thinks is at the heart of the question.

On the point of whether Facebook had matured, Zuckerberg said it had "grown and evolved" from the dorm-room startup.

While Facebook does not sell user data, it is probably its most valuable asset, so he asked why Facebook had not told folks just what it does with that data.

Zuckerberg said users have control and that is clear, but that it has not done a good job of explaining how advertising on the site works.

Related: Sen. Nelson Says Facebook Failed Us

Walden asked if Congress needs to intercede, but did not have time tpo get an answer.

Pallone said he does not have much faith in corporate America or their "GOP allies." He told the Facebook CEO that there needs to be legislation that provides more transparency, the lens through which he sees the issue.

Zuckerberg said Facebook limits the amount of data it collects and uses, that it is changing user privacy default settings so developers can't get as much access to data, but was not ready to commit changing those user default settings to limit as much as possible the collection of user data, saying it deserved more than the one-word answer Pallone was asking for.

Zuckerberg said people were free to port their data to other aps as part of the developer platform to allow people to share their information in different ways.

Pallone said people were not empowered enough to make those porting decisions in a "positive way."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) asked a question submitted to him on Facebook: Why is Facebook censoring Diamond and Silk and other conservative web sites. Zuckerberg said that had been an enforcement error made by his team that is being reserved. That appeared to be a new piece of news. He also said he wanted to give people the most free expression as possible.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) said the government had duped people in the 60's into sharing their personal information, and he was a victim of that. He said Facebook was doing something similar, the wholesale invasion and manipulation of their basic right to privacy, likening him to former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.

Zuckerberg said the difference is that people can choose not to have Facebook collect info. He said he knows of no surveillance effort that allows that.

Rush shot back that Facebook was no longer a dorm-room startup, and that it now had enormous social responsibility that Zuckerberg had failed to consider.

Zuckerberg said people are pro-actively choosing to use the service, which customer-facing controls over how that data is shared.

Rush brought up the report that Facebook had allowed real estate ads to exclude African Americans from target audiences.

Zuckerberg said that option for advertisers to remove ethnic groups had been removed.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) sounded a note of caution about regulation suggesting it could cement the position of a Facebook while hurting startups. Zuckerberg conceded that one of the things regulation can do is favor big companies, like his, while discouraging start-ups without big pockets.

Upton also raised the issue of a Facebook bias against conservative speakers, using the example of a Michigan state reps announcement of his platform for an upcoming political race, which included pro-life and opposition to "sanctuary cities." It was rejected by Facebook with the explanation that it did not accept shocking or disrespectful or violent speech. Upton read

the statement and pointed out he couldn't understand how it violated the policy. Zuckerberg said there could be a mistakethere, too.

He also told Senators Tuesday that he understood their concern about the left-leaning tendency of Silicon Valley, but that Facebook should not be vetting speech for political content.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) asked about Russian influence over elections and asked if Facebook had a way to inform the government if it discovered such activity.

Zuckerberg said Facebook was deploying new AI tools to ferret out fake accounts, but did not address whether there was also a process for informing the government of any activity it discovers. He called it an arms race and could not promise it could prevent all interference.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Zuckerberg who owned the "virtual you" online. He said everyone owns their own content and that protecting privacy is a foundational corporate value.

She said Facebook will have to provide opt-in choice to guarantee the right of privacy.

Related: Zuckerberg Says He Didn't Do Enough to Prevent Fake News

Blackburn asked whether Facebook adjusts its algorithms to censor speech. He said they didn't think of what they were doing as censoring speech.

The issue is not whether Facebook adjusts its algorithms, but whether the way it does that extends beyond terrorism and racism to a definition of hate speech that incorporates political views with which some at the company disagrees. That is Republican's key concern.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) cited reports that Facebook's algorithm for its news feed was biased against conservative voices and asked if that was a corporate directive. Zuckerberg said no. Scalise asked whether he was aware of that bias, but there was not enough time for and answer. Scalise asked for one in writing, and that Zuckerberg investigate whether anyone at thecompany built a bias into the algorithm.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said there needed to be robust penalties for violations of privacy, particularly Facebook violations of the FTC 2011 consent decree.

An obviously unhappy Rep. Michael Doyle (D-Pa.) pointed to the 20-year FTC consent decree and said that Zuckerberg appeared illing to "flout internal policies and government oversight when it suited him. He said the only way to close that trust gap is through legislation that will require giving a government agency rulemaking authority--something the FTC doesn't have--to oversee and protect user data.

Zuckerberg suggested that while Cambridge Analytica's access to user data was a breach of people's trust, it was not a violation of the consent decree.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) cited a long history of apologies from Facebook, which is why she said self-regulation just won't work. She cited Zuckerberg apologies from 2003, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2017, and 2018. On the subject of protections Zuckerberg said Facebook was supplying users at the point of decision, Schakwosky said: "Who is going to protect us from Facebook."

Facebook stock began its asthmatic ascent on Wednesday, wheezing to a $1.04 per share gain (up 0.6%) in early trading March 21 even after Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Weiser said the social media giant’s recent problems can also be traced to poor management.

Facebook has lost about $50 billion in market capitalization in the past three days after news reports that U.K. based Cambridge Analytica, which assisted the Trump campaign in 2016, used data from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission.

Facebook shares have plunged about 10% since Monday, shedding about $50 billion in market cap. The stock got off to a rocky start on Wednesday – it was down as much as 3% in early trading to $163.30 per share, but showed a slight gain ($1.04, or 0.6%) to $169.19 per share by 11 a.m..

Wieser, who already had a “sell” rating on Facebook stock on concerns about limited growth in digital advertising, wrote in a note to clients March 21 that not all of its problems are due to outside forces, adding that the company is “exhibiting signs of systemic mismanagement.”

“Facebook has addressed some of its problems, and presumably will address the remainder or eventually be compelled to do so,” Wieser wrote. “However, investors now have to consider whether or not the company will conclude that it has grown in a manner that has proven to be untenable or whether it needs to significantly improve how it is managed.”

He added that the former would lead to a shrinking in size of the company, the latter hints at personnel changes.

“Both of these scenarios are incremental risks to those previously contemplated in our analyses,” Wieser wrote.

Some recent missteps like the distribution of “fake news," racist but legal uses of the platform and users who commit crimes and then document them while in the act on Facebook Live could be chalked up to bad luck or bad choices, Wieser wrote. But he added that other problems – like its failure to follow up on the Cambridge Analytic data leak (which was first reported on in 2015), its failure to take down some illegal content and flawed advertising metrics point to operational issues, which are a whole new class of problems for the social media giant.

“By contrast, operational failures are in some ways more problematic, because they strongly suggest that even when the company intends to comply with its legal and commercial obligations it is not always able to do so,” Wieser wrote. “They are worse when third parties find the errors, because the company should have been looking to anticipate those errors before others found them. While we have in the past described some of these problems as occurring as a consequence of rapid growth on massive scale, responsible managerial choices probably should have involved actively slowing growth in order to ensure that sufficient processes were put in place to avoid the problems that occurred. Although Facebook is certainly subject to more scrutiny because of its successes, we are unable to think of another company which has had as many operational problems as those which Facebook has experienced over the past few years.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has called for a congressional hearing on Cambridge Analytica's reported use of Facebook user data (from some 50 million users) to build profiles it then sold to political campaigns.

Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica for violating its policies, saying the company got the information from a third party, which it should not have been able to do.

Markey pointed out that Cambridge Analytica had worked with the Trump campaign.

Analytica reportedly used the information with most users having not given their permission for it to have been shared by with a third party.

Markey said that "in light of these allegations, and the ongoing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consent decree that requires Facebook to obtain explicit permission before sharing data about its users, the Committee should move quickly to hold a hearing on this incident, which has allegedly violated the privacy of tens of millions of Americans."

Facebook says it is looking into reports that Cambridge did not delete the collected information as promised, but disputed the suggestion from some quarters that it was a data breach, though it said that a user's sharing of the information with Cambridge was a violation of its policies, which is why it suspended both that user and Cambridge, as well as the reports that the information had not been subsequently deleted.