Facebook pays $725 million to settle privacy dispute

First modification: 12/24/2022 – 11:54

Facebook parent Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a 2018 lawsuit which accused the social network of allowing third parties – including Cambridge Analytica – to access users’ private data. The settlement amount was disclosed Thursday night following a court filing.

“The proposed $725 million settlement is the largest recovery ever achieved in a data privacy class action lawsuit and the most Facebook has ever paid to settle a private class action lawsuit,” attorneys for the plaintiffs said in the filing.

Facebook did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which still must be approved by a San Francisco judge.

In August it had been reported that Facebook had reached an preliminary agreementthough the amount and terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time.

The lawsuit began in 2018, when Facebook users accused the social network of violating privacy rules by sharing their data with third parties, including the British firm Cambridge Analytica, linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Cambridge Analyticawhich has since shut down, collected and exploited the personal data of 87 million Facebook users without their consent, according to the lawsuit.

That information was allegedly used in the software development to guide American voters in favor of Trump.

Since then, Facebook has removed access to its data from thousands of apps suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information available to developers and made it easier for users to gauge restrictions on the sharing of personal data.

Federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 for misleading its users and imposed independent oversight of its handling of personal data.

(With AFP)