SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Facebook’s parent company has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social media platform allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be transferred to Cambridge Analytica, a company that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016.
The terms of the settlement reached by Meta Platforms, the holding company of Facebook and Instagram, were made public in court documents filed late Thursday. It has yet to be approved by a judge in a hearing scheduled for March in federal court in San Francisco.
The case followed 2018 revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a firm with ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon, had paid a Facebook app developer to access the personal data of some 87 million users of the platform. This data was then used to target US voters during the 2016 election campaign that culminated in Trump’s election as the 45th President.
The furore over the revelations led to a contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by US lawmakers during a high-profile hearing in Congress, urging people to delete their Facebook accounts. Though Facebook’s growth has stalled as more people connect and chat with competing services like TikTok, the social network still has about 2 billion users worldwide, including nearly 200 million in the US and Canada.
The lawsuit, which aimed to be certified as a class action lawsuit for Facebook users, had claimed the data breach proved Facebook was a “data brokering and surveillance company” as well as a social network.
The two sides reached a preliminary settlement agreement in August, just weeks before a Sept. 20 deadline for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and its longtime chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to file depositions.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said in a statement Friday it sought a settlement because it was in the best interests of its community and its shareholders.
“Over the past three years, we have revised our privacy approach and implemented a comprehensive privacy program,” said spokeswoman Dina El-Kassaby Luce. “We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust, with privacy at the forefront.”