The stock price went up by any measure, from Feb 3, 2017 to Mar 19, 2018, so it can't be compensation for that. Unless they are willing to give those gains back?
Facebook has lost almost $60 billion in value since the CA story broke. If you’re an investor, and this information wasn’t publicly available to you, you might feel aggrieved and want to seek compensation.
Facebook is a public company. They have strict rules related to informing stock owners and insider trading.
Investors should be able to win a lawsuit if they can prove that company did not immediately disclsee important information, falsified information or that some owners were privy to insider information when they traded (Zuk sold his shares in suspicious time).
If you read the article a bit further, you might find the explanation:
>Zuckerberg's sales accounted for the most, by far. He announced plans in September to sell 35 million to 75 million shares over the next 18 months to fund philanthropic efforts.
It's not new and was announced in September 2017.
From the same article:
>CEO Mark Zuckerberg sold 1.14 million shares as part of regularly scheduled programs.
The whole discussion surrounds events that occurred long before September 2017, which is why this is interesting. Previous articles indicated that the company, and likely Zuckerberg himself, was aware of part of the situation in 2015 and found out more in 2016 / early 2017. If it can be established that he knew about it, the 2017 September sales announcement is arguably tainted.
I have read the lawsuit, and it accuses Facebook of making false and misleading statements in their data privacy policy. It takes issue with this section of Facebook's privacy policy:
While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information. Your trust is important to us, which is why we don't share information we receive about you with others unless we have:
• received your permission;
• given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy; or
• removed your name and any other personally identifying information from it.
The lawsuit claims Facebook violated bullet points 1 and 2, citing the CA news. The lawsuit uses this point to argue Facebook lied to their investors, did not provide more information on this in their SEC filings, and that investors suffering financial loss when the stock price fell after CA news.
IANAL, but I think the key phrase from the article is this:
"The suit would represent people who bought shares of Facebook from Feb. 3, 2017, when Facebook filed its annual report and cited security breaches and improper access to user data, through March 19.
Investors may be able to sue Facebook successfully if they can show the company induced them to invest based in part on false, misleading or incomplete information regarding practices that might have averted the user privacy issues, Robbins said."
The fact is, Facebook knew about the voter-profile harvesting. The question is, were they legally supposed to disclose it publicly and did anyone invest in Facebook under the false pretenses created by Facebook choosing not to disclose it.
It's kinda narrow and it is very hard to prove why someone chooses to invest in a company. I doubt this get much traction. I also think it sets a scary precedent, unless the plaintiffs can prove Facebook covered this up with an intention to lure potential investors (like a memo from Zuck stating as such).
What do these investors want exactly, more money?
The stock price went up by any measure, from Feb 3, 2017 to Mar 19, 2018, so it can't be compensation for that. Unless they are willing to give those gains back?