Meta to Settle Cambridge Analytica Scandal with $725 Million Payment

Meta Platforms Inc. has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the research firm Cambridge Analytica. This is a huge victory for the plaintiffs, who have been fighting for years to get compensation for the unauthorized sharing of their personal data.

The plaintiffs said in a court filing late Thursday that the settlement 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."

The settlement between Meta and Facebook brings the former one step closer to resolving the latter's 2018 suit. The suit was brought by Facebook users after it was revealed that the UK research firm connected to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for president had accessed the data of as many as 87 million of the social media network's subscribers. The agreement between the two parties requires the approval of a federal judge overseeing the suit.

The lawyers representing the consumers in this case have been steadily gaining leverage to access Facebook's internal records and use them to support their claims that the company failed to safeguard their personal data. If Facebook's parent company had gone to trial and lost, they could have been on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

"We pursued a settlement because we believe it is in the best interest of our community and shareholders," Meta said in an emailed statement. "Over the last three years, we have revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program. We are committed to continuing to build services that people love and trust, with privacy as a top priority."

Since the case was filed, Facebook has stopped allowing third parties to access data about users through their friends, plaintiffs said in a court filing detailing the settlement. The company has also strengthened its ability to restrict and monitor how third parties acquire and use Facebook users’ information, and improved its methods for telling users what information Facebook collects and shares about them, according to the filing.

Last month, Google agreed to pay a total of $391.5 million to 40 US states to resolve a probe into controversial location-tracking practices. This is the largest such privacy settlement in US history. Separately, a judge last month approved a $90 million Meta deal to settle a suit over the use of browser cookies and Facebook’s “Like” button to track user activity.

Meta said in an August court filing that it had agreed to settle the Cambridge Analytica suit, but no terms were revealed at the time. A filing a month earlier showed that Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg would have to sit for as long as six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers. The same filing indicated that former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg would have to testify as well.

Facebook has argued that it disclosed its practices in user agreements. It has also said that anyone sharing their information on a social network shouldn’t expect to keep their privacy.

The case is In Re Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, 18-MD-02843, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). This case involves a class action lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly violating consumers' privacy rights by collecting and storing their personal data without their consent.