Facebook has agreed to settle a four-year federal lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access private user data, according to court filings.<\/p>\n
The settlement \u2013 the terms of which have not been disclosed by Meta Platforms, the social media giant\u2019s parent company \u2013 brings closure to a long-running case alleging that Facebook violated consumer privacy laws by sharing millions of users\u2019 data with third parties, including the now-defunct British firm connected with Donald Trump\u2019s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
According to a filing on 26 August, a US District Court judge in California has put the class action case on hold for 60 days until attorneys finalise the terms in a written settlement, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
The agreement was reached before a 20 September deadline for Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to submit pre-trial depositions in the case.<\/p>\n
Now-former COO Sheryl Sandberg, who announced she is leaving the company after 14 years earlier this year, also was likely to be deposed.<\/p>\n
A group of Facebook users sued the company following 2018 reports that Cambridge Analytica \u2013 with ties to Steve Bannon \u2013 paid Facebook app developers for access to roughly 87 million users\u2019 account data, which was used to target and psychologically profile voters during the 2016 election in which Trump was elected president.<\/p>\n
Members of Congress grilled Mr Zuckerberg about the breach during marathon hearings, in which lawmakers pressed the platform about third-party data mining and the proliferation of dis- and misinformation and interference among political actors.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit asserted Facebook is both a \u201cdata broker and surveillance firm\u201d as well as a social network.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Facebook told The Independent that the company does not have a comment at this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook has agreed to settle a four-year federal lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access private user data, according to court filings. The settlement \u2013 the terms of which have not been disclosed by Meta Platforms, the social media giant\u2019s parent company \u2013 brings closure to a long-running case alleging that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n