Meta to pay $90 million for settlement of an old privacy lawsuit


By MYBRANDBOOK


Meta to pay $90 million for settlement of an old privacy lawsuit

A 2012 lawsuit against Facebook will finally come to a close. Meta has agreed to a settlement of $90 million, in a privacy case that saw it accused of user tracking. The lawsuit had claimed that Facebook continued to track and collect data from users, even after they had logged off from the service.

 

All plaintiffs affected by the data tracking will receive a portion of the $90 million settlement, and Facebook will delete all data, improperly collected from them.

 

Meta's Drew Pusateri said that, "Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders and we’re glad to move past this issue.”

 

The decade old lawsuit was dismissed in 2017 by a federal judge who said the affected users failed to show that they suffered monetary damages or had any reasonable expectations for privacy.

 

Then in 2020, the case was revived with a ruling that Facebook's data collection did affect the plaintiffs financially and the social network did so without the explicit permission from them.

 

Facebook appealed to move the case to the Supreme Court, which declined, letting the ruling stand.

 

According to the settlement proposal, "Even before the Settlement was reached, this litigation had already profoundly improved privacy rights. The Ninth Circuit clarified that when personal data is unlawfully copied and monetized; the result is economic harm (not just privacy harm) even if the value of the data in plaintiffs’ hands does not diminish.”

 

The settlement will apply to any users that visited websites with a Facebook like button between April 2010 and September 2011.

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