Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica data breach lawsuit

Users sued the social media company in 2018 after it was revealed that the UK research company gained access to the data of 87 million subscribers

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg would have to sit for six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers in the data breach trial. AFP

Meta Platforms settled a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the research firm Cambridge Analytica.

The preliminary settlement, disclosed in a court filing on Friday, follows the revelation last month that Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg would have to sit for as long as six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Facebook users sued the company in 2018 after it was revealed that the UK research company connected to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for US president gained access to the data of as many as 87 million of the social media network’s subscribers.

In hard-fought battles over pre-trial information sharing, lawyers for the consumers have steadily gained advantage to pry into the company’s internal records to back up their claims that Facebook failed to safeguard their personal data.

Facebook’s parent company could have been on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars had it lost the case.

The court filing last month also showed chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg would have to testify. The depositions were scheduled to take place through September 20.

In Friday’s filing, lawyers for both sides asked the judge handling the lawsuit to pause it to “facilitate the process of finalising a written settlement agreement” and presenting it to the court for preliminary approval.

Facebook had argued it disclosed its practices in user agreements. It had also said that anyone sharing their information on a social network should not count on holding on to their privacy.