Toni Hobrecht
According to a US District Court filing, Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to settle the Cambridge Analytica case for $725 million. The proposed settlement would end a case that had been ongoing since 2018. In this, Facebook was accused of giving the external consulting company access to the data of almost 87 million users.
Facebook Office Seattle / Meta Quest Pro Headset
Cambridge Analytica, a now defunct company, worked on Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016. It collected personal information from Facebook accounts for voter profiling and targeting without users’ consent.
The case prompted governments around the world to re-evaluate their privacy practices. Facebook had previously agreed to pay $5 billion to settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation in 2019. Another $100 million was due to settle claims from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Both cases were about privacy and how Facebook uses users’ data.
A federal judge in the San Francisco Division of the Northern District of California Court has yet to approve the settlement. According to Reuters, Meta did not admit any wrongdoing and claimed that it “revamped the approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program”.
