GOT FACEBOOK? GET MONEY

By ReShonda Tate

If you’re among the millions of people who use or have used Facebook, you have one month left to apply for your share of a $725 million settlement over the social network’s privacy violations.

Te settlement, part of a fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked the U.S. electoral process, was signed in December 2022 and ended years of litigation over Facebook’s role in improper data sharing with a data consultancy frm used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In all, the Cambridge Analytica scandal cost Meta, Facebook’s parent company, nearly $5.9 billion. Beyond the $725 million settlement, the company paid a record $5 billion settlement to the Federal Trade Commission, alongside a further $100 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Facebook rebanded itself as Meta in 2021 and settled the suit a year later. In some ways, it’s a much different company than it was during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The company has since expanded further into the metaverse with new hardware products like the

Quest 3, coming this fall. It’s also revealed its Llama 2 large language artifcial intelligence model, Reels to compete with TikTok and, more recently, Treads, which is taking on Twitter.

Te breach forced Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress and to take out full-page ads where he apologized for the missteps. “I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. We’re now taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” Zuckerberg said.

Te settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing.

People who had an active U.S. Facebook account between May 2007 and December 2022 have until Aug. 25 to fle a claim. Individual settlement payments haven’t yet been established because payouts depend on how many users submit claims and how long each user maintained a Facebook account.