On Thursday, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, settled a class-action lawsuit for $725 million, admitting that it had let third parties like the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica access user data without permission.
After it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had collected data on 87 million Facebook users, the social media giant settled the four-year case.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys reportedly told NBC News that the settlement amount “is the highest Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action and the biggest recovery ever attained in a data privacy class action.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said to Reuters in a joint statement, “This historic settlement will give real relief to the class in this complicated and unusual privacy issue.”
The plaintiffs claimed that Facebook had given “many third parties access to their Facebook content and information without their authorization and that Facebook failed to oversee the third parties’ access to appropriately, and use of, that information,” as stated by the legal firm.
According to CNN’s reporting, attorneys involved in the class action settlement predicted that between 250 and 280 million people might get payouts.
As part of the deal, Meta did not confess to any wrongdoing. A corporate representative did say that settling the litigation was in the company’s “best interest” and that of the community and its shareholders.
We’ve taken privacy seriously for the past three years and built a robust program to protect user data. Meta spokeswoman Dina Luce told CNN, “We look forward to continuing to create services consumers enjoy and trust with privacy at the center.”
Now the deal must be approved by judges in California’s Northern District.
Because of allegations that it improperly obtained the personal information of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting, Cambridge Analytica has shut down.
In 2019, Facebook settled claims of misleading investors about the risks of abusing user data by agreeing to a $5 billion privacy settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission and a $100 million settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.