Here's how to put in for a (small) share of Facebook's $725M privacy settlement
aprott
Users of the omnipresent social-media platform Facebook (NASDAQ:META) during a 15-year span are eligible to put in their claim for a piece of a $725M class-action settlement -- but given the hundreds of millions of Facebook users, the amount each might receive could be small.
Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) agreed in December to pay that amount to settle a class action lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data-privacy scandal, which argued Facebook leaked access to user data (for 87M users) to a third party without consent. Meta denied any wrongdoing in the matter.
Now a website is live allowing people who had an active Facebook account between May 2007 and December 2022 to file a claim on the money, which is due by Aug. 25. Users must enter contact information and confirm they lived in the U.S. and were Facebook users, and they can also submit the information by mail.
Similarly, those users wanting to opt out of the class and retain their own rights for legal action face a July 26 deadline. The settlement is set for a final approval hearing on Sept. 7.
The lawsuit estimated that the class size was 250M-280M people. But the ultimate amount any Facebook users might receive is dependent on the number of claims filed and how long users maintained their Facebook accounts; a "point system" measures the number of months that a user maintained their account in figuring their payout.