Meta Platforms agrees to settle lawsuit over 2018 Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal (update)
Fritz Jorgensen

Facebook parent Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) has reached an undisclosed settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed over the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a U.K. firm harvested up to 87M Facebook usersâ data for use in political ad campaigns.
Meta and lawyers representing Facebook users wrote in a motion filed with the U.S. District Court for Northern California that they âhave reached a settlement in principle of the [lawsuit, and] jointly request a stay of the action for 60 daysâ to finalize the deal in writing.
The two sides provided no details about the settlement, although some had speculated that META could face hundreds of millions of dollars in damages if it lost the suit.
The settlement came just weeks before the plaintiffsâ lawyers expected to subject META CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a six-hour deposition, and former company COO Sheryl Sandberg to five hours of questioning.
Word broke in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct U.K. consulting firm, used an online quiz to collect information not only on people who took the poll, but also on some 87 million of their Facebook friends. The firm reportedly collected usersâ public profiles, Web pages they had liked and more.
Cambridge Analytica allegedly used the data to help clients like the 2016 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz target online ads. Some suspect the company also provided data to the successful 2016 pro-Brexit campaign in Britain.
Facebookâs stock lost nearly $120B in market cap in the days after the scandal became public, and the company eventually paid a $5B fine to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
The social-media giant also agreed as part of an FTC settlement to impose stronger protections on usersâ data, while Zuckerberg had to testify before Congress about the scandal. Additionally, the Meta CEO also took out full-page newspaper ads apologizing to Facebook users.
As for Cambridge Analytica, the firm eventually declared bankruptcy in the United States and went out of business.