Meta will pay a record $725 million to settle the scandalous case with Cambridge Analytica and the data transfer of 87 million Facebook users

Meta, Facebook's parent company, has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit and a scandalous case involving Cambridge Analytica.

Here's What We Know

This story has been dragging on since 2018. The now-defunct consulting company Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, illegally obtained personal information from Facebook accounts for voter profiling and targeting without user consent .In total, Cambridge Analytica accessed data from 87 million social network users.

As a result, Facebook was accused of giving third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access to users' personal information. Attorneys for the users claimed that Facebook misled them into thinking that it could retain control over personal data, when in fact it allowed thousands of privileged outsiders to gain access.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have called the proposed settlement, $725 million, the largest settlement ever reached in a data privacy class action in the United States and the highest amount Meta has ever paid to resolve a class action.

At the same time, the company itself did not admit wrongdoing and said it had agreed to a settlement "in the interest of the community and shareholders."

Source: Reuters