Are you a Facebook user? Here’s how to claim your share of $725m settlement in privacy lawsuit
U.S. Facebook users have one more month to apply for their share of a $725 million privacy settlement that parent company Meta agreed to pay late last year
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Facebook users in the US have just one more month to apply for a share of a $725 million privacy settlement.
Meta agreed to pay the fine late last year, but those affected must explicitly ask for it by sending in a form. Those that don’t will miss out on any share of the vast settlement.
The payment is part of an agreement, reached with Meta, to settle a lawsuit that alleged it allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Anyone in the US who has had a Facebook account at any time between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, is eligible to receive a payment. To apply for the settlement, users can fill out a form and submit it online, or print it out and mail it. The deadline is August 25.
It’s not clear how much money individual users will receive. The larger the number of people submitting valid claims, the smaller each payment will be since the money has to be divided among them.
The case sprang from 2018 revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a firm with ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon, had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million users of the platform. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign that culminated in Trump’s election as the 45th president.
Uproar over the revelations led to a contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by U.S. lawmakers and spurred calls for people to delete their Facebook accounts.
Facebook’s growth has stalled as more people connect and entertain themselves on rival services such as TikTok, but the social network still boasts more than 2 billion users worldwide, including an estimated 250 million in the U.S.
Beyond the Cambridge Analytica case, Meta has been under fire over data privacy for some time. In May, for example, the EU slapped Meta with a record $1.3 billion fine and ordered it to stop transferring users’ personal information across the Atlantic by October. And the tech giant’s new text-based app, Threads, has not rolled out in the EU due to privacy concerns.
Additional reporting by Associated Press