Faisal Ghaffar 
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, agreed to pay $72 million to deal with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The long-running dispute accused the company of a data breach, letting third parties access Facebook users’ data.
According to the lawyers, Meta will pay a significant sum in the USA data privacy cases. The social media did not admit misconduct and said Facebook had refurbished its perspective on data privacy over the last three years.
Facebook said it settled the political agency scandal in the best interest of its shareholders and community. The company looks forward to continuing to offer services everyone will love and trust confidentiality at the forefront.
Meta’s agreement to pay an amount to settle the legal case is not a surprise since it is not that much money for social media. The amount is significantly less than a tenth of what Facebook spent to create Metaverse in 2021.
The Fine Amount May Not be Too Much for Meta
While Meta is not too sad about this deal, the incident stands as a warning to social media platforms that making such mistakes can be excessively expensive. The suggested lawsuit settling amount came into view in the court filing Thursday.
Lesley Weaver and Derek Loeser, the lead lawyers for the complainants, said the settlement is subject to a federal judge’s approval in San Francisco. Facebook will get meaningful relief in the novel and complex privacy case.
Cambridge Analytica Scandal Impacts 87 million Facebook Users
Facebook has been in the “trauma” of the data breach. It allegedly allowed third parties, including the British firm, to access users’ private data. The complainants filed a lawsuit on the behalf of a large class of Facebook users, who believed the social media released their private data to third parties without taking their consent.
The ruling document reveals around 250 to 280 million Facebook users in the US found their private data leaked to third parties without their consent. The data breach happened from May 2007 to December 2022.
While the company does not admit wrongdoing, it agreed to pay a fine to Cambridge Analytica. However, it is still vague how the complainants would claim their share of the lawsuit settlement.
It would be two to three US dollars per user if each person chose to make a claim. The lawsuit has a next hearing about the settlement on 2 March next year.
Although the $72 million settlement does not include UK users, a lawyer put forward a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against Meta about users’ private data exploitation that does not cover the Cambridge Analytica span.
Facebook Scandal Finally Unfolds
The scandal concerning third-party apps harvesting Facebook users’ private data came to public attention in 2018. The consulting firm worked for former US President Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016. It used data from millions of Facebook users for voter targeting.
Cambridge Analytica obtained that data without their owners’ consent from a researcher who did so with the approval of Facebook using an app on the platform for harvesting data from millions of social media users.
Facebook shared the private information of 87 million users with the political consultancy improperly. The scandal led to government investigations into social media’s privacy practices, resulting in a lawsuit. It also caused Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta boss, to attend a high-profile US congressional hearing and address the questions about the matter. The social media giant had also paid $100 million for the settlement of Us Securities and Exchange Commission claims that social media misguided investors about misusing users’ information.
