US technology giant Meta, the parent company of social networking site Facebook, is paying $725 million (€683 million) to buy off a class-action lawsuit case against their allowing the harvest of users’ data against their consent, including with controversial research firm Cambridge Analytica, according to court documents.
Users sued Facebook in 2018 after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica - a British research firm involved in Donald Trump's 2016 US presidential election campaign - possessed the data of up to 87 million users of the social networking site. The Trump team used that data to specifically target certain Facebook users. According to the complainants, the sharing of the data was illegal.
Back in August, Meta revealed that it had reached a settlement. However, details of the settlement were not yet known. Now it appears that Meta is paying $725 million to settle the case. A federal judge has yet to approve the settlement, though.
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The plaintiffs' lawyers managed to gain increasing access to internal Facebook documents that would substantiate allegations that the platform was not doing enough to protect the privacy of its users. "We pursued a settlement because it is in the best interest of our community and shareholders," responded Meta, which stressed that it had since reversed its privacy policy.
According to Bloomberg, Meta would risk having to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more if it had gone court and lost the case. Moreover, with the settlement, the group avoids the need for top executive Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg to testify for hours.
