Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit.
The settlement, revealed in a court filing late Thursday, settles a lengthy legal battle.
This was triggered by revelations in 2018 when it became known that Facebook had allowed the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to access data from up to 87 million users.
The company had published a survey.
Due to the privacy settings that were common at the time, the analysis company also gained access to information from the Facebook friends of the survey participants.
When this became known, Facebook came under pressure and vowed to improve data protection.
Cambridge Analytica had also worked for a time during the 2016 presidential campaign for the then victorious Donald Trump.
However, the role of this data in the success was later downplayed.
Meta did not admit wrongdoing, but said the settlement was "in the best interests of our community and our shareholders." Plaintiffs' attorneys called the proposed settlement the largest ever reached in a U.S. privacy class-action lawsuit and the highest Meta ever paid to settle a class action lawsuit.
Risk of a process avoided
If the case had ended in a lawsuit, Meta would potentially have had to pay significantly more in the event of a loss.
The plaintiffs' lawyers may have had access to internal documents to support their allegation that Facebook failed to properly protect user data.
In addition, both Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and former head of operations at Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, should have testified.
Meta probably wanted to avoid that.
The group had argued that its handling of data was sufficiently set out in the terms of use and that users of social networks would automatically give up some of their privacy.
Since the lawsuit, however, it has no longer been possible for third parties to access user data via friends, Meta promises in court documents.
In addition, the group monitors more closely how third parties access and use the data of Facebook users.