On Wednesday, December 7th, I was cramming in my college library for a psychology exam when I received an email from the Freedom of Information Act officer at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Attached was a 2019 filing of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s filing with the agency. I put my books away.
The document arrived after I waited a year for a public records request, which I filed after seeing a tweet from Jason Kint, CEO of trade group Digital Content Next. The tweet included an image of a court filing in which Facebook’s attorneys publicly revealed that he had been removed from office by the SEC. This was new information — and something of particular interest to those of us who pay close attention to what Zuckerberg has to say about his company, particularly in the context of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It turns out that the document in question shows that Zuckerberg misled lawmakers as to when he actually became aware of this notorious company.
Wow. this is late night news deep in a court filing.
Mark Zuckerberg was removed from office by the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 19, 2019. Facebook’s opposition to DC including Zuckerberg in its lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica cover-up has just been made public — and it’s on display. /1 pic.twitter.com/apFdFx5kR6— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) November 30, 2021
(My colleagues and I at the Real Facebook Oversight Board have posted the full minutes we received from the commission on our website. It can be found here.)
The filing was part of an investigation by the SEC into whether Facebook misled investors for years after company employees first discovered Cambridge Analytica’s data breach. The now-defunct British political consultancy worked for the Trump campaign in 2016 and claimed to be “psychographically targeting” through posts and ads on Facebook. Cambridge Analytica obtained millions of users’ personal data after Cambridge University academics Aleksandr Kogan and Joseph Chancellor scraped Facebook profiles via a third-party app they developed. They then sold that data to Cambridge Analytica.
This episode shocked consumers with its revelations about years of leaks from the Facebook platform and the ease with which political actors were able to obtain potentially sensitive user data. The incident set the stage for a record-breaking $5 billion fine by the Federal Trade Commission and a smaller $100 million settlement with the SEC, announced the same day.
But Facebook’s disclosure and accountability around the Cambridge Analytica scandal was never really realized. The UK Information Commissioner’s office released a hasty letter of its findings on Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of data after promising a full report to a UK parliamentary body. Details have slowly leaked out from the Senate Intelligence Committee, other public records for interviews with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and more recently lawsuits in Washington, DC; the Northern District of California; and Delaware.
Looking for more details on what Mark Zuckerberg knew about Cambridge Analytica and when he knew, I submitted my application in November 2021. A week later, the SEC hastily denied my filing, saying it could neither “confirm nor deny” the filing’s existence. (a common denial used by authorities when requesting public records). I found it absurd considering that Facebook itself had disclosed the existence of this document and even included a date when the deposition in a DC court took place.
So I appealed. Without legal advice, I researched FOIA appeals to the Commission. Drawing on the files in the DC court, precedent for other CEOs having their statements released by the SEC (like convicted Theranos boss Elizabeth Holmes), and an apparent case of public interest, I built my appeal. I submitted it in January of this year.
In February, to the shock of my colleagues and I, the SEC’s General Counsel Office approved my application and said they would begin searching for “responsive records.” Big! I thought. I’ll get that transcript!
Not so fast. What ensued was months of back-and-forth with SEC attorneys, who told me that Zuckerberg and Facebook have the ability to weigh up what information gets redacted and what gets exposed. I’ve been told March, April, June, August and September are months to expect a response. But every month I emailed the commission asking for a status update. To their credit they responded, but I still had to wait.
I finally had it in December. Two key takeaways struck my colleagues and I when I first got my hands on them. As now reported by CNN, Portal and others, in September 2017 Zuckerberg wrote a statement he would make on Facebook Live about the threat posed by Russian intelligence agents on Facebook and the actions Facebook was taking. But according to SEC attorneys, SEC attorneys received a draft of the speech in which Zuckerberg named names — specifically Cambridge Analytica, which he considered in September 2017 to be an appropriate threat to these Russian actors. Advisors later wrote it out of the speech — we may never know why.
Draft speech deposited page 188. Declassified transcript
Remarks by Zuckerberg in 2017. CNBC
The world would learn of Cambridge Analytica in March 2018 when the Guardian and New York Times published the story. At the time, Zuckerberg also claimed he learned about Cambridge Analytica, or at least that’s what he told Congress and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during a 2019 testimony.
“So you won’t pick up lies or you’ll pick up lies? I think that’s just a pretty simple yes or no.”
Full exchange between @RepAOC @AOC and Mark Zuckerberg at today’s hearing of the House Financial Services Cmte.
Full video here: https://t.co/heT7Psnlp1 pic.twitter.com/0iiWtfU5gQ
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 23, 2019
SEC attorneys also produced a January 2017 email from Zuckerberg — eight months before the speech — in which he appeared to first inquire about Cambridge Analytica in connection with an article that appeared in Vice/Motherboard. He asked, “Can someone explain to me what they actually did from an analytics and display perspective and how advanced it actually was?”
Released copy deposited page 167. Motherboard
Released copy deposited page 168. Motherboard
This discrepancy between when Zuckerberg first became aware of Cambridge Analytica personally and when he disclosed it to investors is the subject of a shareholder lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, in which a large conglomerate of shareholders allege that Facebook executives failed in their fiduciary duties and the FTC overpays protect Zuckerberg from personal liability and engage in insider trading.
This Zuckerberg timeline question also caught the attention of Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted about the testimony’s coverage, saying, “His testimony before Congress was March 2018. Newly uncovered documents reveal he knew as early as January 2017.” “
The timing of when Zuckerberg became aware of Cambridge Analytica and their electoral efforts is of the utmost importance. That’s why I asked him about it.
His testimony before Congress was March 2018.
Newly uncovered documents show he already knew in January 2017. https://t.co/KMRLUXrc0R
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 20, 2022
A few other honorable mentions from that statement: It seems like former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg was likely fired as well. Zuckerberg was asked by SEC attorneys if he spoke to anyone else about his testimony. He recalled speaking to a woman whose name has been blacked out but who had an office next door to his, so he saw Facebook’s lawyers come to prepare her for her testimony. I filed a motion for her testimony, which was denied by the SEC on Tuesday. I will appeal.
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The best tidbit of this has to be a presumably nervous Zuckerberg butchering his own middle name at the beginning of the transcript by adding an extra “T” when asked to spell “Elliot.” “It’s not a good start if you forget how to spell your middle name. Don’t use that very often,” he quipped.
When the reporters covering this story took to Facebook this week for comment, they merely noted that the case with the SEC had been settled for over three years and declined to comment further. My answer to that is: Why weren’t those details disclosed at the time?
This twist — and these documents, which have taken more than a year of appeals and wrangling to secure — show how far Facebook’s leadership will go to cover up the truth. The fact that new revelations about Facebook’s interaction with Cambridge Analytica continue to emerge, and untruths continue to surface, should raise lingering doubts that we can trust this company to be transparent and open, even if under oath .
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America and Arizona State University that explores emerging technologies, public policy and society.