Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica privacy class-action suit
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg can now avoid having to testify in court
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has made a settlement offer in a long-running class action privacy lawsuit that accuses the firm of allowing third parties, such as Cambridge Analytica, to access users' personal information.
Meta submitted a filing [pdf] last week in a San Francisco court requesting the judge to halt the class action lawsuit for 60 days while the plaintiffs' and Facebook's legal teams work out a written settlement.
The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The move comes as the Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the soon-to-be-former COO Sheryl Sandberg were due to testify in court on the issue in September.
The lawsuit, which was filed by a group of Facebook users in 2018, accused Facebook of breaching privacy rules by sharing users' personal data with third parties, including the UK-based Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica made an app called "This Is Your Digital Life" which harvested users' data as well the data of their Facebook Friends.
The data accessed included Facebook users' ages, geographical locations, hobbies, groups they belong to, pages they've liked, religious affiliation, political affiliation, relationships and photographs, as well as their complete names, phone numbers and email addresses.
The app was downloaded about 300,000 times.
The data collected by the app is said to have been used to influence the 2016 presidential election in favour of Donald Trump. Additionally, Cambridge Analytica was accused of using strategies to influence the outcome of the Brexit referendum vote.
In 2018, Facebook acknowledged that the third-party data company could have had access to information on up to 87 million users. Later, the dataset was reduced to be around 50 million.
The scandal raised red flags over how tech firms protect users' personal data. It also eventually led to Zuckerberg appearing before Congress.
The consequences of the Cambridge Analytica findings for Facebook include the loss of two prior privacy lawsuits.
The US federal regulators issued a $5 billion penalty against Facebook in 2019 for deceiving its users and also imposed independent oversight of its personal data management.
Facebook was issued a £500,000 penalty in the UK, where the scandal was examined by the nation's data protection authority following a raid on Cambridge Analytica's premises. The firm initially contested the penalty but ultimately consented to a settlement with the UK authorities without admitting liability.
As a result of the class-action being settled, Zuckerberg and Sandberg will avoid their planned depositions on September 20.
"It is a measure of how desperate Zuckerberg is to avoid answering questions about Facebook's cover-up of the Cambridge Analytica data breach that Facebook has settled this case just days away from him being cross-examined under oath for six hours," said Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer journalist who looked into and reported on Facebook's links to Cambridge Analytica.
"Facebook has proved that they are prepared to pay almost any sum of money to avoid their executives answering these questions. This settlement comes on top of the $5 billion they already paid the FTC," she added.
"The truth will come out one day - but today is not that day."