Meta Platforms Inc. has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running lawsuit with the research firm Cambridge Analytica.
Meta platform, the parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running lawsuit that allowed third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access users' personal information without their consent for political advertising.
Meta Platforms Inc. has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running lawsuit with the research firm Cambridge Analytica.
"The proposed settlement is the largest recovery ever in the US privacy class action", lawyers for the plaintiffs said in the filing.
On Thursday, the amount was disclosed in a court filing. It still awaits the San Francisco courts' approval.
Facebook previously tried to dismiss the lawsuit in September 2019, saying users have no legitimate privacy interest in any information available to their friends on social media.
The data-collecting app called "thisisyourdigitallife" has been available to users since 2014, allowing users' public profiles, page likes, date of birth, gender, locations, and even messages to be collected for building psychographic profiles.
App developed by a data scientist named Aleksander Kogan and his company global research in 2013. The app claimed to reveal users' personality trials based on what they liked on Facebook by pushing their profile information in exchange for a small payment.
Around 300,000 users took the psychological test. The app collected data of those who installed the app and their Facebook friends without permission and exploited the personal data of 87 million Facebook users without their consent, and used them to develop software to steer US voters in favour of Trump.
Facebook banned the app "thisisyourdigitallife" in 2015 for contravention of its platform policy. It also requested GSR and Cambridge Analytica to delete the improperly acquired data.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "This was a breach of trust between Kogan and Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook" also added, "it was a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it."
Federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 for tricking its users and forced independent oversight of its personal data management.
The tech giant rolled out a tool called Off Facebook Activity for users to "see a summary of apps and websites that send us information about your activity, and clear this information from your account if you want to".
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