You frame this as if it was a logical train of thought but it isn't to me (and apparently I'm not the only one). You're not to decide what the UK courts determine to be acceptable or not and imho you're reasoning is rotten from the get go so any conclusions you draw from it are equally invalid. "consent" isn't a free pass, I can give you the explicit consent to kill me and it would still be illegal for you to do it in every country I know of.
Facebook has a systemic issue with the way they harvest, handle, share and monetise their users data, this case is just a drop in the ocean of sketchy things they've done, I'm not going to cry for them when they finally get a slap on the wrist
> Facebook has a systemic issue with the way they harvest, handle, share and monetise their users data, this case is just a drop in the ocean of sketchy things they've done
How did Facebook benefit from this? Facebook got duped just like everyone else. CA did not disclose their intentions when they got access to the Facebook API because they wouldn't have got that access otherwise as their actions were against the FB API terms of use.
There's a bit of a witch hunt going on about Facebook, and while I despise that company and want to see it gone too, this is just an outraged mob clutching at straws. They can't go after Cambridge Analytica nor the people behind it (and I guess can't be bothered to vote/lobby for a legislative change so that those people can be prosecuted) so they're venting their anger on the next best thing: Facebook, even though they're a neutral party in this case.
But again, you're missing the forest for the tree. You discuss the symptoms while I discuss the root cause. A phone shouldn't let third party randomly siphon arbitrary data about you and your friends without making public the full scope of their project. A consent isn't consent if you're being tricked into giving it for nefarious use
This lawsuit is explicitly not about the big tech giant's (Facebook) data processing (which I agree is a problem).
The lawsuit is about how Facebook should've somehow been able to predict the future malicious actions of a company and prevent users from sharing their data with them against their own will (again nobody's data was shared without consent - people explicitly opted to share their data - which includes basic info about their friends, which I'd argue is their data too - with Cambridge Analytica).
If there's a "megacorp shark" here, it's Cambridge Analytica and not Facebook.