Trial opens against Meta CEO Zuckerberg, others over Facebook privacy Violations

An $8 billion class action investors’ lawsuit against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company leaders — current and former — began Wednesday, with claims stemming from the 2018 privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.

Investors allege in their lawsuit that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016. Shareholders say Facebook officials repeatedly and continually violated a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission under which Facebook agreed to stop collecting and sharing personal data on platform users and friends without their consent.

Facebook later sold user data to commercial partners in direct violation of the consent order and removed disclosures from privacy settings that were required under consent order, the lawsuit alleges.

The fallout led to Facebook agreeing to pay a $5.1 billion penalty to settle FTC charges. The social media giant also faced significant fines in Europe and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users. Now shareholders want Zuckerberg and others to reimburse Meta for the FTC fine and other legal costs, which the plaintiffs estimate total more than $8 billion.

The case is expected to run through late next week and include testimony from both Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

U.S. Producer prices stagnated on declining services costs, Bureau of Labor report says

U.S. wholesale inflation moderated in June as a sharp decline in the costs of travel-related services blunted a pickup in goods prices.

The producer price index was unchanged from a month earlier, after an upwardly revised 0.3% gain in May, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Wednesday. U.S. wholesale prices rose 2.3% from a year earlier, the least since September.

Excluding food, energy and trade services, the PPI was also flat. It increased 2.5% from June of last year the smallest annual advance since late 2023.

The PPI report follows June consumer price data that showed higher tariffs are filtering through into a variety of categories that include household furnishings, appliances and recreational goods. While inflation has been mild so far this year, many economists expect it to gradually build as more companies attempt to offset higher trade costs.

The latest wholesale price data suggest manufacturers are so far proceeding cautiously on the extent to which they can pass through higher U.S. tariffs to their customers.

Gamestop’s ‘Staplegate’ Switch 2 fetches $250K in auction, 500 times its original price

At the release of Nintendo Co.’s new console last month, some GameStop customers found their devices’ screens ruined after an employee forcefully stapled receipts to the boxes. Instead, the video game retailer transformed the blunder into another viral moment by selling one of the damaged units for about 500 times its retail price in a charity auction.

The punctured Switch 2 fetched $250,000 on eBay Wednesday, compared to $499.99 for a pristine one with Mario Kart included in stores. The lot also includes the black stapler and offending staple, “carefully extracted and preserved.”

“Basically, it turned into a collectible,” Chief Executive Officer Ryan Cohen told CNBC in an interview on Tuesday about the incident, dubbed “Staplegate” online.

Compiled from Associated Press and Bloomberg reports.