PROFFESIONAL PRACTICES

HU4092
Assignment # 1

Instructor: Ma’am Maliha Ammad

Submitted by: Sameen Alvi
Roll Number: F2022266858

School of Systems and Technology

UMT Lahore Pakistan

Meta Platforms, Inc
Meta Platforms, Inc., a Menlo Park, California-based American multinational technical
corporation doing business as Meta, was previously known as Facebook, Inc. and The
Facebook, Inc. The company also owns and operates WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram,
Threads, and other products and services. One of the most valuable corporations in the
world, Meta, is included among the top ten largest publicly traded companies in the
United States. Along with Alphabet, the parent company of Google, Apple, Microsoft,
and Amazon, it is recognized as one of the Big Five American IT companies. Along with
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, and Oculus (which it integrated into Reality
Labs), Meta has also acquired Mapillary, CTRL-Labs, Facebook, Instagram, and a 9.99%
stake in Jio Platforms. The company has also ventured into non-VR hardware, such as the
now-canceled Meta Portal line of smart displays, and it currently partners with Luxottica
through the Ray-Ban Stories wearable technology. Even with its forays into hardware, the
company's primary source of income remains advertising, which accounted for 97.5
percent of its total revenue in 2022.
On January 4, 2004, 19 years ago, in a dorm room at Harvard University in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, US, Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin
Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes created meta. Mark Zuckerberg is a self-taught computer
programmer and co-founder, chair, and chief executive officer of Meta. He continued to
lead the company. He played a pivotal role in shaping the company's direction and its
transition to becoming a metaverse-focused company. Andrew McCollum was one of the
original co-founders of Facebook. However, he left the company in its early days. After
leaving Facebook, he went on to work on various other ventures and projects. Chris
Hughes was another co-founder of Facebook, but he also left the company early on. After
leaving Facebook, he became involved in various philanthropic and advocacy efforts and
also published a book. He was not actively involved in Facebook's (Meta's) management
or direction. Eduardo Saverin had a well-known legal dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over
his ownership stake in Facebook. The dispute was eventually settled, and Saverin
received a substantial financial settlement. He has since invested in various technology
startups and other ventures. Dustin Moskovitz was one of Facebook's co-founders and
held the position of Chief Technology Officer. He left Facebook in 2008 to co-found
Asana, a collaborative work management software company. He continued to be
involved with Asana as of my last knowledge update in 2022.
On January 1, 2012, Facebook submitted an initial public offering (IPO) application.
According to the preliminary prospectus, the website was receiving 2.7 billion likes and
comments every day, and the company had 845 million monthly active users. It also
intended to raise $5 billion. Following the IPO, Zuckerberg would hold 57% of the voting
shares and keep a 22% ownership stake in Facebook.

Ethical Dilemma’s Faced:

 January 16, 2020

Reveal Chat, Lenddo, Cir.cl, Beehive v. Facebook

On January 16, 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Facebook by Reveal Chat, Technology and
Management Services, Cir.cl and Beehive, claiming that Facebook restricted their usage of the
user data it had garnered. Yavar Bathaee, an attorney, said in a statement that "Facebook faced
an existential threat from mobile apps" and that instead of responding by "competing on the
merits", they had "intentionally eliminate[d] its competition".

Plaintiffs allege that between 2004 and 2010, Facebook vanquished a number of rivals in order
to emerge as the dominant social network in the United States. "By 2010, Facebook stood alone
as the dominant player in the newly emergent market for social data (the 'Social Data Market')
—a market in which Facebook's own users provided Facebook with a constant stream of
uniquely valuable information, which Facebook in turn monetized through the sale of social data
(for example, through advertising, monetizing APIs, or other forms of commercializing access to
Facebook's network)." Facebook sold access to social data to developers and sold
advertisements targeting Facebook's network of engaged and active users. Because user data
made Facebook's network more valuable and thus attracted more customers, which then led to
more data and more customers, a feedback loop emerged. Data provided by users made
Facebook's network more valuable, thereby attracting more users to the network. A new
entrant would have to rapidly replicate both the breadth and value of the Facebook network by
building its own vast network and duplicating the active user engagement on the same massive
scale. Plaintiffs allege that this "Social Data Barrier to Entry" allows Facebook to control and
increase prices in the Social Data and Social Advertising Markets without the pressures of price
competition from existing competitors or new entrants.

Although the Court is aware that statute of limits challenges are typically postponed until a
more complete record is presented, this is one of the few instances in which Facebook's
completed actions after the statute of limitations has passed form the basis of the Plaintiffs'
whole theory of culpability. Plaintiffs have revealed via their own pleading the lack of effort, the
timeliness of their claims, and their knowledge of their injuries. The Court concludes that the
four-year statute of limitations applies in this instance and that the plaintiffs have not
sufficiently proven a tolling argument based on the theories of fraudulent concealment or
ongoing violation. In its initial judgment approving Facebook's move to dismiss, the Court
informed the Plaintiffs that "allegations of fraudulent concealment must be pled with
particularity." Facebook's move to be dismissed WITH PREJUDICE is granted by the Court
because it determines that further amendment would be pointless given Plaintiffs' sufficient
notice of the requirement to plead with particularity and their persistent inability to do so.

 December 8, 2020
Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

On December 8, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission, along with 46 US states (excluding
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota), the District of Columbia and the territory
of Guam, launched an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. The lawsuit concerns Facebook's
acquisition of two competitors - Instagram and WhatsApp - and the ensuing monopolistic
situation. FTC alleges that Facebook holds monopolistic power in the US social networking
market and seeks to force the company to divest from Instagram and WhatsApp to break up the
conglomerate.

The lawsuit was initially dismissed in June 2021 but was launched again in an amended state in
August 2021, citing Meta's buyouts of rivals as a cause for alarm. In March 2022, the Chamber of
Commerce rejected the 46 states' appeal to revive their lawsuit, citing the overly long waiting
period between Facebooks's acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram and the filing of the suit.

In January 2022, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that FTC has grounds to
proceed with its antitrust lawsuit against Meta. With its amended lawsuit, FTC is seeking to
make Meta sell its subsidiaries.

 February 2021
Jukes v. Facebook, Inc.

In February 2021, journalist Peter Jukes sued Facebook for failing to protect the data of around
a million users in England and Wales, therefore violating the Data Protection Act 1998.
This representative action seeks damages from Facebook, on behalf of affected individuals in
England and Wales, as a result of Facebook’s failure to comply with its statutory duties under
the Data Protection Act 1998. The claim is being brought against Facebook Inc. and Facebook
Ireland Limited under Rule 19.6 of the Civil Procedure Rules, by which a representative claimant
can bring a claim on behalf of a class of people with the same interest. Everyone with the same
interest as the class representative is included in the claimant class unless they choose to opt-
out.
Peter Jukes explains why he is bringing the claim:
“Facebook profits from its billions of users, who reasonably rely on the platform to protect the
personal information they entrust to it. Facebook exploited that trust by making users’ private
data available to a third-party app, without their consent or even knowledge. This opened our
personal data up to abuse. It is only right that we, as consumers, hold Facebook to account for
failing to comply with the law and for putting our personal data at risk, and to ensure that this is
not allowed to happen again.”

Michael Bywell, Partner at Hausfeld, said:

“Facebook breached its legal obligations to protect the data of its users. The law is clear that
Facebook had a duty to safeguard users’ personal information – a duty that it neglected. With
an experienced team, committed class representative and funding and ATE insurance in place,
we believe this claim offers the best avenue of redress for consumers who suffered at the hands
of Facebook’s failure to abide by data protection laws.”

 July 2022
Class Action v. Meta Platforms Inc.

In July 2022, a former Army vet and member of Facebook's escalation team sued Facebook. The
lawsuit claimed that Facebook introduced a tool in 2019 to allow staff access to deleted
Messenger data and that this data was sometimes shared with law enforcement. Ruling 2-1, the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco restored shareholders' claim that the company,
then known as Facebook, falsely said that user data "could" be compromised. At the time, the
company was already aware that the UK-based consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had violated
its privacy policies, shareholders allege. Shareholders sued in 2018 after the company's stock fell
on reports that Facebook was still allowing third parties to access user data, and that data from
the Cambridge Analytica breach had been used in connection with Donald Trump's presidential
campaign.

The lawsuit was largely dismissed in 2020, before the 9th Circuit ruled that shareholders of
Alphabet , Google's parent company, could sue over warnings that data privacy risks "could"
occur when a breach had already happened. The 9th Circuit majority cited the Alphabet ruling in
reviving the case against Meta.Circuit Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented, saying that Facebook's
disclosures concerned the type of risks involved in its business, not whether or not a data breach
had occurred.

Facebook paid more than $5 billion in penalties to U.S. authorities over the Cambridge Analytica
scandal and paid $725 million to settle a lawsuit by Facebook users.