In 2011, the US Federal Trade Commission put Facebook under consent decree after the company "deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly [allowed] it to be shared and made public." The way the FTC generally works is that if it catches a company doing something terrible, it issues one of these "consent decrees" which amount to, "don't do it again, or we'll take the company away." But Facebook did it again.