Meta Platforms Inc., the company that owns Facebook, has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the social media juggernaut of granting access to user data to outside organizations, such as Cambridge Analytica.
The agreement would put an end to a long-running lawsuit alleging that Facebook gave the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica access to the data of as many as 87 million users. The settlement was revealed in a court filing late on Thursday, December 23.
The proposed payment was described by the plaintiffs’ lawyers as the largest ever reached in a U.S. data privacy class action and the highest amount ever paid by Meta to settle a class action case.
Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs, stated in a joint statement that “this historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case.”
As part of the deal, which must be approved by a federal judge in San Francisco, Meta did not admit any wrongdoing. The settlement was “in the best interest of our community and shareholders,” according to Meta.
Meta said, “Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program.”
Millions of Facebook accounts’ personal information were made available to Cambridge Analytica, which supported Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016.
According to reports, Cambridge Analytica received the information from a researcher who had been granted permission by Facebook to utilize an app on its social media network that collected data from millions of its users.
The scandal that broke in 2018 was what brought about the government probes into Cambridge Analytica’s privacy practices, litigation, and a highly publicized U.S. congressional hearing where Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by lawmakers.
In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $5 billion to settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its privacy practices and $100 million to address allegations that it misled investors about the misuse of users’ data by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.