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San Francisco (AFP) – The American giant Meta, owner of Facebook, has agreed to pay 725 million dollars to end the lawsuit launched in 2018 claiming damages from the social network accused of having allowed third parties, including the company Cambridge Analytica, to have access private user data.
“The $725 million offered by the settlement is the highest amount ever reached in a private data class action lawsuit and ever paid by Facebook to end” this type of lawsuit, defense lawyers said in a statement. a court document filed in a San Francsico court, released Thursday evening.
Facebook has admitted no infringement under the terms of this agreement which has yet to be approved by a judge in this court.
The conclusion of a preliminary agreement was announced last August, without the amount or the terms of this agreement being revealed at the time.
It came as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief executive Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation in June following 14 years with the company, were due to testify in court in September in connection with the scandal.
In a procedure initiated in 2018, Facebook users accused the social network of having violated privacy protection rules by sharing their data with third parties, including the firm Cambridge Analytica, linked to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.
Cambridge Analytica, which has since closed, had collected and used, without their consent, the personal data of 87 million Facebook users, to which the platform had given it access.
This information would have been used to develop software used to guide the vote of American voters in favor of Donald Trump.
In July 2019, federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion for “misleading” its users and imposed independent oversight of its handling of personal data.
Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has removed access to its data from thousands of applications suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information accessible to developers in general and made it easier for users to calibration of personal data sharing restrictions.
© 2022 AFP