A few weeks before the commercial made rounds, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called before Congress to explain his company’s position in the wake of the revelation that the data of tens of millions of Facebook users was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm hired by the Trump campaign. Among the unconvinced were the multiple agencies on both sides of the Atlantic who have been investigating the tech giant, one of which, the British Information Commissioner’s Office, has announced plans to slap Facebook with a preliminary fine of $500,000 for failing to properly guard its users’ personal information.
Though $500,000 is pocket change for Facebook, which earns as much every five minutes, it was the maximum fine permitted under the UK’s Data Protection Act, which was still in effect when the breach occurred. Under the European General Data Protection, which took effect in May, the fine could have been as high as $1.9 billion.
Though Zuckerberg told Congress in April that Facebook shut down apps that gathered the personal data of users, according to CNN, the company is now saying that an extension was given to dozens of developers, one of which was a Russian Internet company connected to the Kremlin.