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Facebook and the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are negotiating a possible deal, whereby the social medium must set up an independent committee for privacy supervision. That’s what a source said to Politico, says Reuters.

The committee could possibly include board members from the social medium. In addition, Facebook should appoint a privacy employee at the highest level of the company to be approved at the federal level. CEO Mark Zuckerberg would also assume the role of “designated compliance officer”, in which he would be responsible for implementing the company’s privacy policy.

The possible agreement between the company and the FTC is in addition to the fine of 3 billion to 5 billion dollars that the social medium claims to take into account. Facebook said in announcing its quarterly figures that it had set aside money to pay the fine, as well as other costs related to the FTC’s investigation.

Both Facebook and the FTC refused to respond to the reporting.

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The FTC’s investigation began last year, after it became clear that Cambridge Analytica had wrongly obtained data from millions of users. This data was used to draw up political profiles that were intended to influence the presidential elections in America.

The Washington Post reported in February that Facebook was negotiating with the FTC for a settlement of the scandal. It also became clear that the FTC is considering imposing its highest fine ever. The maximum fine is $41,484 per person. According to some estimates, around 87 million people were affected by the scandal, bringing the fine rapidly up to over three trillion dollars.

The fine’s probably not going to be that high. According to The Washington Post, however, the FTC considers it important that at least a few billions are involved, because otherwise the company ‘feels’ nothing about it. The highest fine so far handed out by the FTC was to Google in 2012. The fine was 22.5 million dollars.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.