Facebook data scandals stoke criticism that a privacy watchdog rarely bites

Cambridge Analytica data leak set off a reckoning for Facebook and a far-reaching debate about the tech industry, which has collected more information than almost any other in history

Last spring, soon after Facebook acknowledged that the data of tens of millions of its users had improperly been obtained by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, a top enforcement official at the Federal Trade Commission drafted a memo about the prospect of disciplining the social network.

Lawmakers, consumer advocates and even former commission officials were clamoring for tough action against Facebook, arguing that it had violated an earlier F.T.C. consent decree barring it from misleading users about how their information was shared. But the enforcement official, James A. Kohm, took a different view. In a previously undisclosed memo in