EPIC FOIA – FTC Confirms Number of Pending Facebook Complaints, Doubling Every Two Years

April 3, 2019

In response to EPIC's Freedom of Information Act request, the FTC confirms that there are a total of 26,000 pending consumer complaints about Facebook made while under the consent order. In an e-mail to EPIC, the FTC provided a breakdown of the total number of complaints per year. In 2018 alone, the FTC received 8,391 consumer complaints about Facebook, nearly twice the number received in 2016 (4,612), and more than four times the number received in 2014 (1,860). In the eight years since the FTC entered the consent order barring Facebook from making any misrepresentation about user privacy, the FTC has not taken a single enforcement action against the company. The FTC announced the reopening of the Facebook investigation in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But more than a year later, the agency has failed to act. EPIC has repeatedly urged the FTC to #EnforceTheOrder against Facebook.

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