Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
More than 18 months after the scandal first broke, the Federal Trade Commission has officially ruled that Cambridge Analytica deceived consumers through its data-gathering practices.
In July, the FTC accused the consulting company, as well as CEO Alexander Nix and app developer Aleksandr Kogan, of collecting data on tens of millions of Facebook users through a personality-testing app. The news, first revealed in 2018, upended Facebook and led to a congressional appearance by Mark Zuckerberg. The FTC previously settled the case with Nix and Kogan, and today voted unanimously to formally call the company’s practices deceptive.
In some ways, the vote was largely symbolic. Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy shortly…