August 29, 2022 – Facebook’s parent organisation Meta has agreed to settle the high-profile privacy lawsuit surrounding its controversial data-sharing practices with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica that rocked the social media giant in 2018.
Meta has settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, preventing CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is stepping down from the company in fall, from testifying in the case, according to court papers filed on Friday. Their depositions were scheduled for next month.
“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 journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who is known for her role in exposing Meta’s illegal mass data-sharing with Cambridge Analytica.
The class-action privacy lawsuit was filed in 2019 by Facebook users. It alleged that Meta violated consumer privacy laws by sharing data of millions of users with Cambridge Analytica, a UK analysis firm that shut down in 2019. The firm had reportedly used the improperly obtained data from Meta to build voter profiles ahead of the 2016 US presidential elections.
The complainants accused Meta of harvesting and sharing, without consent or knowledge, their “highly personal and revealing” data (photos, videos posted or viewed, religious and political views, information regarding relationships, and even the exact words used by them in their messages). In response, Meta stated that users cannot claim privacy violations when they are the ones posting information about themselves on social media or websites that are publicly accessible. Meta’s arguments were later rejected by the court.
Investigations revealed that Meta allowed Cambridge Analytica access to personal data of nearly 87 million (initially reported to 50 million) of its users, which was deployed for targeted political advertising tied to the UK’s Brexit referendum campaign in 2016 and to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential elections.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Meta $5 billion following the massive data breaches.
