Cambridge Analytica: Facebook agrees to pay $725 million

Facebook’s parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit it filed in 2018 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “The $725 million proposed by the settlement constitutes the highest amount ever reached in a class action lawsuit over private data and ever paid by Facebook to end” these types of lawsuits, defense attorneys say in a pleading filed with a San Francisco courthouse, released Thursday evening. Facebook has not admitted to any violations of the terms of this agreement which has yet to be approved by a judge in this court.

The conclusion of the a preliminary agreement was announced last August, without the amount or terms of this agreement being disclosed. It came as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Executive Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation in June after 14 years with the company, were due to testify in court in September in connection with the scandal.

In a proceeding launched in 2018, Facebook users accused the social network of violating privacy protection rules by sharing their data with third parties, including the Cambridge Analytica company, linked to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Cambridge Analytica, which has since closed, had collected and used, without their consent, the personal data of 87 million Facebook users, to whom the platform gave them access. This information would be used to develop software used to guide the vote of American voters in favor of Donald Trump.

In July 2019, federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion for “misleading” its users and imposed independent oversight over its handling of personal data. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted, Facebook has removed access to its data from thousands of applications it suspects of abusing it, limited the amount of information accessible to developers in general and made it easier for users to fine-tune sharing restrictions of personal data.