• by Wendy Davis , 2 hours ago

Meta Platforms is renewing its bid to block the Federal Trade Commission from attempting to prohibit the company from monetizing teens' data.

In papers filed late last week with U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington, D.C., the tech company argues that the FTC lacks the authority to unilaterally revise a 2020 settlement over privacy claims stemming from the highly publicized Cambridge Analytica debacle.

"The FTC may not modify a final judgment entered by an Article III court," the company writes, referring to a federal court established by Article III of the Constitution, as opposed to a in-house administrative court operated by the FTC itself.

The 2020 decree -- which resolved charges that Meta allowed the defunct political consultancy Cambridge Analytica and other outside developers to access users' data -- required Meta to pay $5 billion, and called for the company to implement new privacy oversight and obtain independent assessments of its privacy program.

Three years after finalizing that order, the FTC proposed prohibiting Meta from using minors' data to fuel ad targeting or algorithms. The agency's proposal also would have banned Meta from launching new products or service, unless an assessor confirmed that the company's privacy program has no weaknesses.

At the time, the FTC alleged in an in-house complaint (meaning a complaint that would be heard by the agency, as opposed to a federal court) that an evaluator had identified “several gaps and weaknesses” in the company's privacy program, and that between 2017 and 2019, Meta's Messenger Kids had coding errors that allowed children to communicate with people who hadn't been approved by parents, in violation of representations about the feature.

The FTC claimed those alleged privacy weaknesses violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act -- which requires companies to obtain parental permission before collecting personal information of children under 13 -- and partially justified the proposed modifications.

Meta then petitioned Kelly to prevent the FTC from proceeding with its administrative complaint. The company argued that only a federal court could revise the prior decree, which Kelly approved in April 2020.

In November 2023, Kelly rejected Meta's argument, ruling that even though Meta's agreement with the FTC was attached as an exhibit to the judgment he approved, he didn't retain jurisdiction over the agreement.

Meta then appealed to the D.C. Circuit, which reversed Kelly. A three-judge panel of that court specifically held that Kelly continued to have jurisdiction over the settlement agreement. That ruling returns the case to Kelly with instructions to consider Meta's substantive arguments.

Meta argues in its newest papers that it's entitled to an injunction to enforce the 2020 order.

"Failure to grant an injunction would ... irreparably harm Meta -- by subjecting it to an illegitimate proceeding before the FTC, forcing it to relitigate a matter finally decided by this court, and depriving it of the forum for which it bargained," the company contends.

Kelly hasn't yet indicated when he will rule on Meta's request.