By Alliance President Terry Gips
If you live in the US and used Facebook in the last 16 years, you can now collect a piece of a $725 million settlement by parent company Meta tied to privacy violations — as long as you fill out a claim on a website set up to pay out money to the social network’s users. This is a bittersweet consumer victory over giant, values-lacking and money-grubbing Facebook. Sadly, Meta avoided admitting any guilt and the settlement amount of $725 million is a pittance for them.
The settlement stems from multiple lawsuits that were brought against Facebook by users who claimed that the company improperly shared their data with third-party sources such as advertisers and data brokers. The litigation began after Facebook was embroiled in a privacy scandal in 2018 with Cambridge Analytica, which scraped user data from the site as part of an effort to profile voters, according to CBS News.
Meta denied any liability or wrongdoing under the settlement, according to the recently created class-action website. However, the agreement means that US residents who used Facebook between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, can file a monetary claim as long as they do so before August 25, 2023.
How do I claim money under the Facebook settlement?
Go to the claim website to fill out your claim or print out the claim and mail it to: Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, c/o Settlement Administrator, 1650 Arch Street, Suite 2210, Philadelphia, PA 19103.