Facebook fined $40 million for inflating data on video ads in a class-action law suit

Social networking platform – Facebook had been incorrectly calculating average viewing time for video ads on its platform for which it was directed to pay a hefty fine of $40 million in a class-action law suit

Advertisers sued Facebook for overstating video-viewing metrics over an 18-month period from 2015-16, for which the advertisers ended paying extra for video ads based on the inflated data.

According to a report, “The tech giant had only counted video views that lasted at least three seconds, ignoring those of shorter durations and artificially pushing the average length of a view higher”. The legal battle began in 2016. However, the company stated that it discovered the issue only a month before going public with it.

Some Facebook competitors like Snap are reportedly assisting the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as it launches an anti-trust investigation into Facebook’s business practices. Snap, which is the parent company of Snapchat, has created a dossier under “Project Voldemort” that apparently contains Facebook secrets.

In a historic judgment, the US (Federal Trade Commission) FTC in July slapped a massive $5 billion fine on Facebook over users' privacy violations in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, along with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) directing the social networking platform to pay $100 million penalty for making misleading disclosures regarding the risk of misuse of user data.