This four-year-long class action lawsuit put the spotlight on Meta’s handling of user data. While the company has denied any wrongdoing, it has agreed to the record-breaking settlement, saying it’s “in the best interest” of the parties involved. If the settlement amount is approved, it would be “the largest recovery ever achieved in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action,” the document filed with the court said. It’s unclear how much each user would get. An estimated 250 to 280 plaintiffs are expected to benefit from the settlement.
Historic Data Privacy Class Action Lawsuit
Meta is accused of allowing several third parties, including the now-defunct consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, to access the personal information of around 87 million users without their consent. This data was initially collected by an external personality quiz app as early as 2014. The app reportedly collected data from users and their friends’ profiles, including data used to build a psychological profile such as liked pages and geographical locations. In light of these revelations, Facebook was slapped with a $5 billion Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fine in 2019 and was accused of violating a 2012 FTC agreement that stated it would not give over user data to third parties without their consent. The company was also accused of violating several U.S. state and federal laws and misleading users into thinking they have control over their data. Meta denied these charges. Nonetheless, the company has since restricted third parties’ access to users’ data and banned several personality quiz apps. Thursday’s court filing comes just days after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released details of its 2019 deposition of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The document shows that Zuckerberg considered revealing his company was looking into Cambridge Analytica at the time as part of its election security investigation. Cambridge Analytica worked with Donald Trump’s campaign ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
Over $1 Billion in Payments in the Last 18 Months
Over the years, Meta has been through unprecedented political and legal tests and continues to face scrutiny. Years of lawsuits have resulted in payouts of over $1 billion in just the last 18 months. In November, the Irish Data Protection Commission fined Meta approximately $277 million for violating the European Union’s data protection law. This month, the European Data Protection Board grilled Meta for its profit-oriented business model of forcing personalized ads on users. Meta has made efforts to be more transparent about its practices and improve privacy on its platforms. In May, the company revamped its privacy policy to make it easily understandable and introduced new privacy controls. The company has also promised end-to-end encryption across its platform by 2023. If you are one of the two billion-plus Facebook users, it’s important to understand what information the company collects about you. Our article on what Facebook knows about you contains everything you need to know. We also recommend checking out out guide to Facebook privacy settings to learn how to safeguard your privacy on the platform.
