‘Unconstitutional, unlawful and unsupported’: How Facebook initially tried to fight a multibillion-dollar US fine

Facebook initially mounted an aggressive legal offensive against federal regulators who sought to fine the tech giant billions of dollars for privacy abuses, arguing in newly revealed documents that the company did not harm consumers or profit from mishandling users’ data — and that it would have prevailed in court if it had come to that.

The arguments laid out by Facebook lawyers in a Feb. 28 white paper shed new light on the tech giant’s bare-knuckle, behind-the-scenes efforts at times to spare itself from the toughest punishments by the Federal Trade Commission. The “proposed penalty is unconstitutional, unlawful and unsupported by the allegations in the draft complaint,” lawyers wrote. “No court would entertain such a penalty, and neither will Facebook." The legal jostling between Facebook and the FTC illustrates the precarious decision that government regulators ultimately would have to make — try to fight the tech giant in federal court, embarking on a lengthy, painful legal battle, or settle with the company and obtain whatever relief Facebook was willing to stomach.

The case resulted in a record-breaking settlement that some critics still decried as too weak.