• The settlement did not include any admission of guilt from Meta.
• The 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump employed Cambridge Analytica.
• Facebook was charged with deceiving users about the use of their personal data.

Meta Platforms Inc., the company that owns Facebook, has agreed to pay $725 million (approximately Rs. 6,000 crore) to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging the social media behemoth of granting access to user data to outside organisations, such as Cambridge Analytica. 

The long-running dispute, which was sparked by allegations that Facebook had given Cambridge Analytica access to the data of up to 87 million users in 2018, would be addressed by the proposed settlement, which was made public in a court filing late on Thursday.
The proposed settlement was referred to by the plaintiffs' attorneys as the largest ever reached in a US data privacy class action and as the most Meta has ever paid to resolve a class action complaint. 

The principal plaintiffs' attorneys, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, stated in a joint statement that 'this historic settlement will provide real relief to the class in this complicated and unusual privacy issue.' As part of the deal, which must be approved by a federal judge in San Francisco, Meta did not admit any wrongdoing. In a statement, the business claimed that reaching a settlement was 'in the best interest of our community and stockholders.' 

We have changed our approach to privacy over the past three years, and we've put in place a thorough privacy programme, according to Meta. The now-defunct Cambridge Analytica contributed to Donald Trump's successful presidential campaign in 2016, using the data from millions of Facebook accounts to target and profile voters.

Without the users' permission, Cambridge Analytica received the data from a researcher who was given permission by Facebook to utilise an app on its social media network to harvest data from millions of its users. Government inquiries into Cambridge Analytica's privacy practises, lawsuits, and a highly publicised US congressional hearing where Mark Zuckerberg was cross-examined by MPs were all sparked by the controversy that followed.

In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $5 billion (approximately Rs. 41,500 crore) to settle an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into its privacy practises and $100 million (about Rs. 850 crore) to resolve SEC allegations that it misled investors about the misuse of user data.