December 24, 2022 – 5:20 PM
A class action lawsuit on behalf of US users began against Facebook parent company Meta, and ended in an out-of-court settlement of $725 million, or HUF 270 billion. Meta did not admit that it really violated the privacy rights of users and gave their personal data into unauthorized hands, according to its justification, “it was in the interest of its users and shareholders” if they agreed to pay a huge amount of compensation.
The case took place during the 2016 US presidential election, but it happened around the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which only came to light in 2018.
Cambridge Analytica was the data-analytics firm that helped the Trump campaign, which obtained user data from the social site to improve Facebook ads, as it turns out, in a legally minimally troubling way. Because of this, several legal cases have been initiated, and in 2019 Facebook has already paid a fine of $5 billion USD for it. Now, a lawsuit filed on behalf of the users has closed in a similar fashion, though it’s not yet clear who is entitled to compensation, on what basis, in what form, and to what amount. In any case, it is certain that the agreement only applies to US citizens.
Although the amount is huge, according to the BBC Talk According to experts, it won’t shake the company, which has spent more than ten times that in one year developing the Metaverse project alone – without any visible results yet.
