Facebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit for damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that sank the tech giant in repeated controversy.
A court filing reveals Facebook’s parent company Meta has settled in principle for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the analytics firm United Kingdom.
It follows revelations of massive data misuse by a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower in the Observer in 2018, an exposé that forced CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress and led to the social media company received a fine of one billion pounds. Days after the story broke, Facebook’s stock price dropped the equivalent of more than $100 billion.
However, some expressed dismay that the timing of the potential settlement would prevent outgoing Zuckerberg and Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg from being forced to testify during up to six hours of questioning by lawyers of plaintiffs next month.
Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer reporter whose investigations into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica also helped inspire the Netflix film The Great Hack, said: “It’s a measure of how desperate Zuckerberg is to avoid answering questions on Facebook’s cover-up of the Cambridge Analytica data breach. that Facebook has settled this case just days after being questioned under oath for six hours.”
Carole Cadwallader. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
It emerged that Zuckerberg and Sandberg, who recently announced he would step down in the fall, would face cross-examination, with depositions scheduled to begin on September 20.
The latest developments follow a separate lawsuit last year that claimed Facebook paid $4.9 billion more than required to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a settlement over the Cambridge Analytica scandal to protect Zuckerberg.
The lawsuit alleged that the size of the $5 billion settlement was motivated by a desire to avoid the Facebook founder being named in the FTC complaint.
Cadwalladr added: “Facebook has shown that they are willing to pay almost any amount of money to prevent their executives from answering these questions. This settlement is in addition to the $5 billion they already paid to the FTC.
“The truth will come out one day, but today is not that day.”
The new court filing, released late Friday, does not provide financial terms or details of the preliminary settlement.
The Observer asked Facebook and its lawyers to share more details of the agreement in principle, but it declined to respond.
However, the filing asks a San Francisco federal court judge to put the class action on hold for 60 days until lawyers for the two plaintiffs and Facebook finalize a written settlement.
The four-year-old lawsuit, filed by a group of Facebook users, alleged that Facebook violated consumer privacy laws by sharing users’ personal data with other companies such as Cambridge Analytica, which filed for bankruptcy two months ago after the Observer exhibition.
Facebook users sued the company in 2018 after it emerged the British analytics firm linked to former US President Donald Trump’s successful 2016 campaign for the White House gained access to data from up to 87 million subscribers of the social network.
It was thought that Meta could have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars if it had lost the case.
Facebook has previously said its privacy practices are consistent with its disclosures and “does not support any legal claims.”