Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the evening of December 23, Beijing time, it was reported that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, today agreed to pay $725 million (about 5.068 billion yuan) to settle a class action over the Cambridge Analytical scandal. The lawsuit alleges that Meta improperly allows third parties to access its users' personal information.

The settlement is the largest settlement reached in a data privacy class action lawsuit in the United States and the highest amount ever paid by Meta in a lawsuit.

The long-running case was triggered by the Cambridge Analytical scandal in 2018. Meta (then Facebook), a British data analysis company, admitted in March 2018 that Cambridge Analytica had illegally obtained information about 50 million Facebook users before the 2016 US presidential election. Later, a survey by Meta found that the information of up to 87 million users was improperly shared by Cambridge Analytics.

In addition, the class action expands the scope of litigation to include other third parties that may improperly use Facebook data. The lawsuit alleges that Meta allows application developers and business partners to access user data without their consent. The number of people affected by the case is expected to be between 250 million and 280 million, representing all Facebook users in the United States between 2007 and 2022.

Meta also said today that in the past three years, the company has changed its privacy protection methods. "We seek a settlement because it is in the best interests of our community and shareholders," Meta said in a statement.

Although it agreed to pay US $725 million in compensation, Meta did not admit any wrongdoing. Meta has been trying to save the company's reputation since the scandal in 2018. In October 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta, but it was still plagued by the Cambridge Analytical scandal. Meta is experiencing its slowest revenue growth since it went public because of fierce competition in the social sector and a decline in digital advertising.

Last month, Meta laid off 11000 employees, or about 13% of its workforce. Meta also recently cut office space in the UK and the US as part of its cost-saving measures.

In 2019, Meta also paid $5 billion to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle FTC's investigation into the incident.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.