FTC Privacy Settlement Won't Hinder Facebook's Ad Business

The Federal Trade Commission unveiled details of settlement with Facebook for violating an order to protect users’ privacy, according to Bloomberg. The deal won’t do much to alter Facebook’s main business.

The company will be able to make product decisions as it always has, and will also still be able to collect the same data from users. For the most part, Facebook will be able to continue targeting ads in the same way it does today.

The FTC, which fined Facebook a record $5 billion, said the company must submit to 20 years of oversight from an independent committee on the board. During that time, any violations could result in more fines and punishments, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg could be held personally responsible for future infractions.

FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, who voted against the settlement, said it “imposes no meaningful changes to the company’s structure or financial incentives, which led to these violations. Instead, the order allows Facebook to decide for itself how much information it can harvest from users and what it can do with that information, as long as it creates a paper trail.“

Facebook said the agreement will require a fundamental shift in the way they approach their work and it will place additional responsibility on people building our products at every level of the company. Facebook said it hopes the agreement, which requires greater accountability than is currently required under U.S. law, will be “a model for the industry.“

The FTC says its order “overhauls the way the company makes privacy decisions.“ But it doesn’t add any significant new items for the company to fix, and many of the broad stipulations in the settlement require Facebook to do things the company is already doing or has promised to do.