The federal judge overseeing the consumer privacy litigation filed against Facebook Inc. in the wake of the company's Cambridge Analytica scandal seems poised to allow at least a portion of the lawsuit to survive.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California on Wednesday heard arguments on the company's motion to dismiss the mulitidistrict litigation and suggested that Facebook's lawyers were wrong to suggest that plaintiffs hold no privacy interest in information shared via social media.

Representing Facebook, Orin Snyder of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher suggested that if a person brought together 100 friends in a room and shared information with them, there would no longer be any privacy interest in that information. “If you don't hold something private, it's not private,” said Snyder, suggesting that a Facebook user would be in a similar position as the person in the room.