Meta to settle Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725 million

Facebook parent Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the social media giant of allowing third parties to access users’ private data. The amount was disclosed in a court filing late on Thursday.

“The proposed settlement of $725,000,000 is the largest recovery ever achieved in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action,” lawyers for the plaintiffs said in the filing.

As part of the settlement, Facebook has not admitted any wrongdoing, which must still be approved by a judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia’s San Francisco division.

In August, it was reported that Facebook had struck a preliminary agreement, though the sum and specifics of the settlement were not disclosed at the time.

In 2018, Facebook users accused the social network of breaking privacy guidelines by sharing their data with third parties, including the British business Cambridge Analytica, which was tied to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

According to the lawsuit, Cambridge Analytica, which has since shut down, then gathered and abused the personal data of 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge.

This information was allegedly utilised to create software to sway US voters in Trump’s favour.

Since then, Facebook has banned access to its data from thousands of apps suspected of abusing it, limited the amount of information available to developers, and made it easier for users to calibrate personal data sharing settings.

In 2019, the federal government penalised Facebook $5 billion for deceiving its users and mandated independent control of its personal data handling.