According to a court document, Meta, the corporation that owns Facebook, will pay out $725 million (£600 million) to plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit alleging privacy violations associated with the Cambridge Analytica incident.

The agreement will put an end to a protracted legal battle over disclosures that the political consultancy had improperly obtained the data of tens of millions of Facebook users and exploited it to target political advertisements. The case's attorneys, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, stated that 'this historic settlement will provide real relief to the class in this difficult and unusual privacy matter.'

 The settlement would 'be the largest data privacy or data breach class action settlement ever achieved in the United States,' they continued in a court filing, adding that it was 10% higher than the next-largest award, which was also made against Facebook for registering users for facial recognition services without their consent.

'We pursued a resolution as it's in the best interest of our community and stockholders,' a Meta representative said in a statement. We revised our approach to privacy during the past three years and put in place a robust privacy programme. With privacy at the centre, we look forward to continuing to develop services consumers love and trust. 

As part of the deal, which still needs to be approved by a judge, the business made no admissions of wrongdoing. Allegations that Facebook violated state and federal regulations by failing to stop app developers from routinely gathering user data centred the case.

 According to the lawsuit, users were duped into thinking that Facebook gave them control over their personal data when, in reality, the business 'continued to allow a chosen list of app developers to access the information of users' friends, despite its pledges to restrict access.' 

The main line of Facebook's defence was that users could not expect complete privacy for information they had previously shared on the website knowing that their friends would see it. The corporation said that as a result, the users had not experienced any 'tangible' harm.
Judge Vince Chhabria denied that in 2019 and stated that Facebook's request to dismiss 'is replete with assumptions regarding the extent to which social media users can reasonably expect their personal information and chats to remain private. Sharing information with your social network pals does not categorically destroy your privacy interest in that information, according to Facebook, which is completely incorrect.