California: Meta Platforms Inc. has settled a long-running lawsuit alleging Facebook unlawfully shared user data with research firm Cambridge Analytica.
The preliminary settlement, which was filed in court late Friday, follows last month’s revelations that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg would have to sit through six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ attorneys. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Facebook users died in 2018 after it was revealed that a British research firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had access to the data of Facebook’s 87 million subscribers. sued the company.
Amid a bitter battle over pretrial information sharing, consumer lawyers have steadily increased their leverage to crack open the company’s internal records to support their claims that Facebook failed to protect personal data. have earned. Facebook’s parent company could have been sued for hundreds of millions of dollars had it lost the lawsuit.
Court filings last month also indicated that Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg would have to testify. The deposit was to take place until September 20th.
In Friday’s filing, attorneys for both sides asked the judge in charge of the case to “facilitate the process of finalizing a written settlement agreement,” suspending the case for presentation to the court for preliminary approval. I asked.
Mehta declined to comment on the settlement.
Facebook claimed to disclose its practices in its user agreements. It also said that anyone who shares information on social networks should not be expected to preserve their privacy.
This case is Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, 18-MD-02843, United States District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
