Meta investors formally asked a US appeals court to revive a proposed class action accusing the Facebook parent of concealing a serious privacy breach that let a political consulting firm harvest users’ personal information.
The request came during oral arguments on Wednesday before the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where data for up to 87 million users was accessed.
Investors claimed that Facebook, as the company was known, misled them in 2016 by describing data breaches as a mere “risk,” when it knew that Cambridge had accessed user data.
Related: Meta Agrees To Settle Facebook Privacy Suit
The investors said they incurred losses in July 2018 when Facebook’s share price fell after the company said user growth slowed after the magnitude of the breach became public.
US District Judge Edward Davila ruled in 2020 that Facebook’s statements were not false because Cambridge’s data use had been in the news in 2015.
