Facebook owner Meta Platforms has agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a category motion lawsuit accusing the social media giant of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access to users’ personal information.
Proposed settlement that has been leaked in a lawsuit late Thursday, will settle a long-running lawsuit sparked by disclosures in 2018 that Facebook allowed British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica access to the information of as many as 87 million users.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers called the proposed settlement the biggest ever reached in a U.S. data privacy class motion lawsuit, and the biggest ever paid by Meta to settle a category motion lawsuit.
![Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/zuckerberg-cambridge-analytica.jpg?w=1024)
“This historic settlement will provide significant class relief on this complex and novel privacy case,” the plaintiffs’ chief attorneys, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said in a joint statement.
Meta pleaded not guilty under the settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal judge in San Francisco. The corporate said in an announcement that the settlement was “in the perfect interest of our community and shareholders.”
![Image courtesy of Cambridge Analytica](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/cambridge-analytica1.jpg?w=1024)
“Over the past three years, we have modified our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program,” said Meta.
The now-defunct Cambridge Analytica worked for Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign and accessed the private data of hundreds of thousands of Facebook accounts for voter profiling and targeting.
Cambridge Analytica obtained this information without users’ consent from a researcher who was allowed by Facebook to deploy an app on its social network that collected data from hundreds of thousands of its users.
The following Cambridge Analytica scandal fueled government investigations into its privacy practices, lawsuits, and a high-profile congressional hearing where lawmakers questioned Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.
![Facebook logo and Meta](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/facebook-cambridge-analytica.jpg?w=1024)
In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $5 billion to resolve a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its privacy practices, and $100 million to settle claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it misled investors over misuse of user data.
Investigations by the state’s attorney generals are ongoing, and the corporate is battling a lawsuit by the Washington attorney general.
Thursday’s settlement settled claims by Facebook users that the corporate violated various federal and state laws by allowing app developers and business partners to collect their personal information without their consent on a big scale.
Users’ lawyers said Facebook misled them into considering they might keep control of their personal data, when in actual fact it allowed access to 1000’s of preferred outsiders.
Facebook argued that its users don’t have any legitimate interest within the privacy of the data they share with friends on social media. But U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called that view “so flawed” and in 2019 largely let the case move forward.
The settlement covers an estimated 250 to 280 million Facebook users, according to a court order on Thursday. How much a person user receives will rely on how many individuals make a sound settlement claim.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers say they plan to ask the judge to award them up to 25% of the settlement as attorney’s fees, equivalent to roughly $181 million.