Meta is preparing for a massive payout to settle multiple lawsuits stemming from its sale of private user data to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Anyone who created a Facebook account in the US between 2007 and 2022 now has one month to apply for their share of the settlement.
Anyone in the U.S. who used Facebook in the last 16 years can now collect a piece of a $725 million settlement by parent company Meta tied to privacy violations, as long as they fill out a claim before August 25. https://t.co/zOQNCwCjWm
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 26, 2023
The litigation against Meta began back in 2018 when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, which was linked to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon, had been allowed to harvest user data in an effort to profile voters before the 2016 election. In total, Facebook app developers had granted the firm access to the private information of more than 87 million users. Those users were then targeted with political ads, though it has not been established what role this played in the outcome of that election.
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Users who created a Facebook account anytime between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, are eligible to file a claim provided they do so before August 25th. At this point, it is unclear exactly how much each applicant will receive, as the final payout will be determined by the number of claims submitted. The more applicants there are, the smaller the individual payout will be—and with more than 2 billion Facebook users worldwide, each piece of the pie may be disappointingly small.
At the same time, Threads, Meta’s newest platform, has struggled to launch internationally amid similar privacy concerns, even as its domestic user base has declined.
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