Over four years after it was initially made public, the Cambridge Analytica privacy issue on Facebook still has an impact. To resolve a long-running class-action lawsuit accusing Facebook of providing Cambridge Analytica and other third parties access to users’ private information, parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million.
The settlement resolves users’ accusations that Facebook broke federal and state laws by allowing its favored suppliers and partners to get their personal data without their permission. According to reports, it’s the most significant settlement ever in a US data privacy class action and the most money Meta has ever spent to settle a class action complaint.
“This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case,” the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement.
The now-defunct Cambridge Analytica contributed to the 2016 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. It used an app (thisisyourdigitallife) to acquire the personal data of up to 87 million users, and it then used the data to target people with messages that specifically catered to them. In 2018, The New York Times and The Guardian broke the scandal largely because of whistleblower Christopher Wylie.
Following a Federal Trade Commission probe in 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a $5 billion fine and $100 million to resolve SEC accusations. Additionally, it made a pittance of a monetary payment to the UK of £500,000 ($644,000), compared to what it would have made had the GDPR been in effect at the time the story broke.
Facebook hasn’t yet distanced itself from Cambridge Analytica either. Instead, the corporation is still defending itself against a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of several states and the District of Columbia.
Meta admitted no wrongdoing
As part of the settlement, which a federal judge must approve, Meta admitted no wrongdoing. In a statement, Meta stated that it had “changed our approach to privacy over the last three years and created a robust privacy program,” adding that the settlement “was in the best interest of our community and shareholders.”
A significant proposed class of Facebook users whose personal information on the social network was unintentionally disclosed to third parties filed the action on their behalf.
According to the decision document, the class size is “in the range of 250-280 million,” representing all Facebook users in the US between 24 May 2007 and 22 December 2022.
The plaintiffs’ method of receiving their portion of the settlement is unclear. If each person chose to file a claim, Janis Wong, a privacy and ethical researcher at The Alan Turing Institute. He estimated that the cost would only be $2–$3 per person.
