A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has initially settled for an undisclosed amount a long-running lawsuit that alleged Facebook illegally shared user data with the British analytics firm. It follows revelations of massive data misuse by a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower to the Observer in 2018, a revelation that forced CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress and led to the social media company receiving a multibillion-pound fine. Days after the story was published, Facebook’s stock price fell by more than $100 billion. But some expressed frustration that the timing of the potential settlement would prevent Zuckerberg and outgoing Meta CEO Sheryl Sandberg from testifying during up to six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers 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 about with Facebook’s cover-up of the Cambridge Analytica data breach. that Facebook has settled this case just days before its six-hour jury cross-examination.” Carole Cadwallader. Photo: Antonio Olmos/The Observer It emerged that Zuckerberg and Sandberg, who recently announced she would step down in the fall, will face questioning, with depositions scheduled to take place from September 20. The latest developments follow a separate lawsuit last year that claimed Facebook paid $4.9 billion more than it needed to to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a settlement over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in order to protect Zuckerberg. The lawsuit alleged that the size of the $5 billion settlement was motivated by a desire to prevent the Facebook founder from being named in the FTC complaint. Cadwalladr added: “Facebook has demonstrated that it is prepared to pay almost any amount of money to avoid its executives answering these questions. This settlement is in addition to the $5 billion they have already paid to the FTC. “The truth will come out one day – but today is not that day.” The new court filing, revealed late Friday, did not provide financial terms or details of the preliminary settlement. The Observer asked Facebook and its lawyers for more details on the tentative settlement, 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 both the plaintiffs and Facebook complete a written settlement. The four-year-old lawsuit, brought by a group of Facebook users, alleged that Facebook violated consumer privacy laws by sharing personal user data with other companies such as Cambridge Analytica, which filed for bankruptcy two months after the Observer report. Facebook users sued the company in 2018 after it emerged that a British analytics firm linked to former US President Donald Trump’s successful 2016 White House campaign accessed the data of up to 87 million of the social network’s subscribers. It was thought that Meta could have been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars if it lost the case. Facebook has previously stated that its privacy practices are consistent with its disclosures and “do not support any legal claims.”
