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The Meta Platforms filing in San Francisco federal court sought a 60-day stay while lawyers finalize the settlement as further details could be disclosed by late October
Facebook's corporate parent has reached a tentative settlement in a lawsuit alleging the world's largest social network service allowed millions of its users' personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported
Donald Trump's victorious presidential campaign in 2016.
Terms of the settlement reached by Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), the holding company for Facebook and Instagram, weren't disclosed in court documents filed late Friday. The filing in San Francisco federal court
requested a 60-day stay of the action while lawyers finalize the settlement. That timeline suggested further details could be disclosed by late October.
The accord was reached just a few weeks before a Sept. 20 deadline for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his long-time chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to submit to depositions during the final phases of pre-trial evidence gathering,
according to court documents.
The ensuing uproar led to a contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by lawmakers during a high-profile congressional hearing and spurred calls for people to delete their Facebook accounts. Even though Facebook's growth has stalled as more people connect and entertain themselves on rival services such as TikTok, the social network still boasts about 2 billion users worldwide, including nearly 200 million in the U.S. and Canada.
The lawsuit, which had been seeking to be certified as a class action representing Facebook users, had asserted the privacy breach proved Facebook is a "data broker and surveillance firm," as well as a social network.
Picture credit: AP
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