Meta, the parent company of Facebook, agreed to pay $725 million to settle the lawsuit and the scandal.
What is known
This story has been going on since 2018.The now-defunct consulting company Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, illegally obtained personal information from Facebook accounts for voter profiling and targeting without user consent. In total, Cambridge Analytica gained access to the data of 87 million users of the social network.
As a result, Facebook was accused of providingthird parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access to users' personal information. Lawyers for users argued that Facebook misled them into thinking it could retain control of personal data when in fact it allowed thousands of privileged outsiders access.
The plaintiffs' lawyers called the proposedThe $725 million settlement is the largest ever reached in a data privacy class action in the United States and the most Meta has ever paid to resolve a class action lawsuit.
At the same time, the company itself did not admit the fact of wrongdoing and stated that it had agreed to settle the claim “in the interests of the community and shareholders.”