Facebook’s parent company Meta agrees to pay $979 million to settle Cambridge Analytica scandal case

SAN FRANCISCO – Meta Platforms has agreed to pay US$725 million (S$977 million) to settle a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook

illegally shared user data with the research firm Cambridge Analytica.

It’s “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 plaintiffs said in a court filing late on Thursday.

The settlement brings Meta a step closer to resolving the 2018 suit brought by Facebook users after it was revealed that the United Kingdom research firm connected to Mr Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for president gained access to the data of as many as 87 million of the social media network’s subscribers. The agreement requires the approval of a federal judge overseeing the suit.

Lawyers for the consumers had steadily gained leverage to pry into the firm’s records to back up claims that Facebook failed to safeguard personal data. Facebook’s parent company could have been on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars more had it gone to trial and lost the case.  The company said in a statement settling was “in the best interest of our community and shareholders.”

“Over the last three years, we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program,” Meta said.

Last month, Google agreed to pay a total of US$391.5 million to 40 US states to resolve a probe into controversial location-tracking practices in what state officials called the largest such privacy settlement in US history.

Separately, a judge last month approved a US$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 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 former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg would have to testify as well.

Facebook had argued it disclosed its practices in user agreements. It had also said that anyone sharing their information on a social network shouldn’t count on holding onto their privacy. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS