Facebook to pay $725 million to avoid trial

The trial on the exploitation of data between Facebook and users of the social network will not take place. 2018, the social network was accused by American suspects grouped in a collective action of having authorized the undue exploitation of their private data to third parties. And more particularly at Cambridge Analytica, a British company that has since gone out of business.

Cambridge Analytica used data from 87 million Facebook users to benefit Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. It was a question of orienting favorably the vote of millions of American voters, which the firm succeeded in perfectly. In August 2022, an agreement was signed between the suspects and Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

This agreement avoids the leaders of the group, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, ex-chief executive, should be compared in a California court next September. However, it remained to know the amount that Facebook agreed to pay to extinguish the legal action. It will ultimately be 725 million dollars, an amount that the judge will however have to validate.

Meta has already been sentenced in 2019, as part of an action led by the federal authorities, to a much higher fine: 5 billion dollars. In addition to the financial penalty, the social network must subject itself to independent control of its management of personal data, an always delicate subject for Meta which arouses much controversy.