California Attorney General Xavier Becerra
offered few details about the probe. He said he
was disclosing it because his office was making a
public court filing to force Facebook to answer a
June subpoena and interrogatories.
Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a
request for comment.
Becerra’s office made a second request for
information after Facebook took a year to
respond to an initial subpoena, according to
a filing with the state Superior Court in San
Francisco. His office sought such information as
communications among executives related to
developers’ access to user data, the relationship
between ad spending and access to data,
the introduction of new privacy features and
privacy-related news stories.
“Facebook broadly refuses to answer the
interrogatories or comply with the subpoena,”
the filing said.
The filing said Facebook hasn’t given answers for 19
of the attorney general’s questions and hasn’t given
any new documents in response to six document
requests. It has refused to search the emails of top
executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg
in response to the second subpoena.
The filing says Facebook isn’t just dragging
its feet, but isn’t complying with subpoenas
and questions.
California hadn’t joined a separate probe
involving attorneys general from New York and
other states. The New York probe is looking
into Facebook’s dominance and any resulting
anticompetitive conduct.
California is also a holdout in a separate probe
into Google’s market dominance.Image: Mandel Ngan