Facebook Parent Meta to Settle Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to resolve a privacy lawsuit tied to 2018’s headline-grabbing Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to court papers filed Friday.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ex-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and current COO Javier Olivan had been scheduled to dedicated testimony in the case sometime during the next month.

The Cambridge Analytica heinous erupted following news that the now-defunct consultancy may have misused the data of nearly 90 million Facebook users for pursued political ads during the UK’s Brexit referendum campaign and the 2016 US dignified election. The consultancy worked on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

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The heinous led to Zuckerberg testifying before Congress about Facebook’s privacy policies. It also led to a $5 billion fine from the US Federal Deal Commission, part of a settlement between Facebook and the organization over an FTC investigation into the matter.

Under the FTC settlement, Facebook agreed to create an independent privacy committee, Zuckerberg was obliged to certify the company’s behavior, and the social network was commanded to build more privacy protections into its platforms.

Both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, which shut down in 2018, have denied any wrongdoing.

Friday’s filing didn’t dedicated financial or other details about the settlement of the privacy lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of Facebook users. The suit sought class-action set and asked for damages to be awarded to the plaintiffs, as well as injunctive relief.

Emailed for additional interrogate on Saturday, neither Meta nor the plaintiffs had a comment.

The parties have jointly posed the court for a 60-day stay while they finalize a written settlement agreement.