This is, of course, true but it's not clear why investors should have any grounds to sue over it. This wasn't actually a PR problem for Facebook until relatively recently - for instance, the 2012 Obama campaign harvested data about the Facebook friends of people who volunteered access to their accounts, those friends obviously didn't consent, and this mostly just lead to glowing articles about how clever this was and how commercial companies could copy it.
What it took for this to be a problem for Facebook was Trump running for and winning the presidency, the press needing someone to blame other than themselves, and them being willing to bury minor details like the campaign probably not actually using the data in question in any form. That doesn't seem like something which could reasonably be predicted in advance.
What it took for this to be a problem for Facebook was Trump running for and winning the presidency, the press needing someone to blame other than themselves, and them being willing to bury minor details like the campaign probably not actually using the data in question in any form. That doesn't seem like something which could reasonably be predicted in advance.