Meta To Pay $725-M In Settling Cambridge Analytica Scam

Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. has agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit accusing the social media giant of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access users' personal information, Nate Raymond reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Cambridge Analytica, now defunct, worked for Donald Trump's successful presidential campaign in 2016, and gained access to the personal information from millions of Facebook accounts for the purposes of voter profiling and targeting without the consent of users.

The proposed settlement, which was disclosed in a court filing late on Thursday, would resolve a long-running lawsuit prompted by revelations in 2018 that Facebook had allowed the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to access data of as many as 87 million users.

The same firm was also accused of harvesting data to support the campaign of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

Its successor company has been likewise suspected of helping Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the deceased dictator, win as Philippine president this year.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs called the proposed settlement the largest to ever be achieved in a US data privacy class action and the most that Meta has ever paid to resolve a class action lawsuit.

"This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case," the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said.

Cambridge Analytica, now defunct, worked for Donald Trump's successful presidential campaign in 2016, and gained access to the personal information from millions of Facebook accounts for the purposes of voter profiling and targeting without the consent of users.

Meta did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which is subject to the approval of a federal judge in San Francisco. It said 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.

The scandal fueled investigations into its privacy practices, lawsuits and a high-profile US congressional hearing where Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by lawmakers.

In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $5 billion to resolve a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probe into its privacy practices and $100 million to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claims that it misled investors about the misuse of users' data.

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