Facebook’s parent company Meta has agreed to a $725 million settlement in the long-running class action lawsuit in the United States where it stands accused of letting third parties access users’ personal data, a court document filed on Thursday reveals.
“Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court preliminarily approve the $725 million non- reversionary Settlement,” reads the document, published by Reuters.
The settlement is “the largest recovery ever achieved in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action,” according to the document.
According to the plaintiffs’ estimates, the “class size” — the total number of people affected — is “in the range of 250-280 million” people, which represents “all Facebook users in the United States during the Class Period, which runs from May 24, 2007 to December 22, 2022.”
The statement still has to be approved by the San Francisco court to which it was filed, with a hearing scheduled for next March.
Facebook users sued the company in 2018, seeking damages over allegations that the social media giant had shared their personal data with third parties.
These included the infamous British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which was linked to Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign.
