Mark Zuckerberg and some top executives of Meta platforms have reached a settlement in an $8 billion lawsuit with shareholders and investors, according to a report from Reuters.
The lawsuit included $5 billion in fines from the FTC from 2019, after it was found that Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm, had accessed data from Facebook users. The issue came to light during a massive privacy scandal that showed Cambridge Analytica used a third party app called This Is Your Digital Life to collect information that was reportedly used to influence the 2016 U.S. election and interfere with Brexit.
Allowing access to that data violated a 2012 agreement between Facebook and the FTC to protect users’ personal information. Shareholders say that the execs allowed repeated violations, causing damage to the company.
Jason Kint, head of the trade group Digital Content Next, told Reuters: “This settlement may bring relief to the parties involved, but it’s a missed opportunity for public accountability. Facebook has successfully remade the ‘Cambridge Analytica’ scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unraveling of its entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal, unbridled sharing of personal data. That reckoning is now left unresolved.”
Details of the settlement were not disclosed. Judge Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery adjourned the trial just before the start of the second day. Meta director and billionaire Marc Andreessen was scheduled to testify Thursday. Zuckerberg was scheduled for Monday, and Sheryl Sandberg on Wednesday. Peter Thiel and Reed Hastings, both former Facebook board members, were also expected to testify.