The long-running dispute accused social media giant Meta of allowing third parties, including the British company, to access the personal data of Facebook users.
The proposed sum is the largest in a US data privacy class action, lawyers say. Meta, who admitted no wrongdoing, said he had “renewed” its approach to privacy in the past three years.
In a statement, the company said the settlement was “in the best interests of our community and shareholders”.
“We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust with privacy at the forefront.”
The Guardian’s Tech Expert James Ball said that “it was no surprise” that Meta had to accept such a large plea deal there hundreds of millions, but what “there weren’t that many” money for the tech giant.
“That’s less than a tenth of what he spent on his efforts to create ‘the metaverse’ last year alone,” he said.
“So Meta probably won’t be too unhappy with this deal, but it represents a warning to the companies of social media that mistakes can be very costly indeed.”
The suggested settlement, which was disclosed in a court filing on Thursday, is subject to the approval of a federal judge in San Francisco.
“This historic agreement will provide significant relief to the class in this complex new privacy case”the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said in a statement.
The complaint was filed on behalf of a proposed class action by Facebook users, whose personal data on the social network was released to third parties without their consent.
Meta still doesn’t know how they will collect $2 each
The size of the class action is “in the order of 250-280 million” of people, according to the ruling document, which represents all Facebook users in the United States during the “observation period” which runs from May 24, 2007 to December 22, 2022.
It is unclear how the plaintiffs would claim their end of the settlement. Janis Wong, a privacy and ethics researcher at the Alan Turing Institute, said that it would only amount to two or three dollars per person if each individual decided to apply.
A further hearing on the settlement is scheduled for March 2, 2023.
“While this $725 million settlement doesn’t cover UK users, earlier this year a competition law expert filed a multibillion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Meta regarding the exploitation of user data that covers the Cambridge Analytica period.”
“We should hear more from the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal in the new year”. The collection of personal information of Facebook users by third-party apps has been aThe centerpiece of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, exposed in 2018.
The now-defunct consultancy worked for Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016 and used personal information from millions of US Facebook accounts for the purpose of voter targeting and profiling.
The company obtained that information without users’ consent from a researcher who had been allowed by Facebook to distribute an app on the platform that collected data from millions of users.
Facebook believes that the data of up to 87 million people have been shared improperly with political advice.
The scandal prompted government investigations into Facebook’s privacy practices, which led to lawsuits and a high-profile US congressional hearing in which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was questioned.
In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $5 billion to settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its privacy practices.
The tech giant also paid off $100 million to pay off claims by the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it misled investors about the misuse of user data.
The state attorney general’s investigation continues, and the company is filing a lawsuit from the Washington DC Attorney General.
The damage remains beyond the insult, to the users who, in order to collect, will have to commission a lawyer to carry out the practicede facto much more expensive of the $2-3 refund.
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