Reuters/Charles Platiau

Facebook on Wednesday was sued by Washington, DC, over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

In a blog post out Tuesday evening, the company admitted that Netflix and Spotify were able to access user messages.

Shares fell about 6.8%, wiping out $22 billion of market value.

Watch Facebook trade live.

Facebook shares were lower Wednesday, down 6.8% at $133.94 a share, hit by a one-two punch of news.

Wednesday afternoon, Washington, DC, sued the social-media giant over its Cambridge Analytica data scandal. That came just hours after the company said on Tuesday evening that Netflix and Spotify were able to access user messages. The selling wiped out $22 billion of market value, dropping its market capitalization to $319 billion.

"Facebook failed to protect the privacy of its users and deceived them about who had access to their data and how it was used," Attorney General Karl Racine said in a press release, according to NBC.

"Facebook put users at risk of manipulation by allowing companies like Cambridge Analytica and other third-party applications to collect personal data without users’ permission. Today's lawsuit is about making Facebook live up to its promise to protect its users' privacy."

And in a blog post out Tuesday evening, Facebook said, "Did partners get access to messages? Yes."

It continued: "But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner's messaging feature. Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify's desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our API provided partners with access to the person's messages in order to power this type of feature."

A Spotify spokesperson told Business Insider that it cannot currently read users' private Facebook messages and that there is no evidence it has ever accessed them.

"At no time did we access people’s private messages on Facebook, or ask for the ability to do so," a Netflix spokesperson said.

Wednesday's selling comes after shares had recently rallied sharply off their November lows, gaining as much as 16%.

Facebook's stock has been hit hard in recent months, falling more than 40% from its July all-time high of $218.62, as the company has dealt with the fallout surrounding the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and the hack of and the hack of 30 million users' sensitive data.

Alongside its second-quarter results in July, Facebook said that revenue growth rates would decline by "high single digit" percentages in the coming quarters. In October, the social-media giant reported the number of daily active users were flat compared to a year ago.

Facebook was down about 20% this year through Tuesday.

Markets Insider

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