Meta settles Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725m:
Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay $725m (£600m) to settle legal action over a data breach linked to political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
The long-running dispute accused the social media giant of allowing third parties, including the British firm, to access Facebook users' personal data.
The proposed sum is the largest in a US data privacy class action, lawyers say.
[...] Tech author James Ball told the BBC it was "not a surprise" that Meta has had to agree to a serious pay-out but that it was "not that much" money to the tech giant.
"It's less than a tenth of what it spent on its efforts to create 'the metaverse' last year alone," he said.
"So Meta probably won't be too unhappy with this deal, but it does stand as a warning to social media companies that mistakes can prove very costly indeed."
[...] "This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case," lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said in a statement.
[...] The class size is "in the range of 250-280 million" people, according to the ruling document, representing all Facebook users in the US during the "class period" which runs from 24 May, 2007 to 22 December, 2022.
It is not clear how the plaintiffs would claim their share of the settlement.
Janis Wong, a privacy and ethics researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, said it would only amount to two or three dollars per person if each individual decided to make a claim.
This doesn't even look like it would cover both a coffee and donut at Tim Hortons.
Related Stories
A while back, we read about how Tim Hortons' app tracked users' movements throughout the day, whether the app was open or not. The tracker noted locations visited, including homes, workplaces, and competing coffee chains.
Now, after an investigation by Canada's privacy commissioner, to resolve a class action lawsuit, Tim Hortons have suggested a settlement:
Tim Hortons says it has reached a proposed settlement in multiple class-action lawsuits alleging the restaurant's mobile app violated customer privacy which would see the restaurant offer a free coffee and doughnut to affected users.
The company says the settlement, negotiated with the legal teams involved in the lawsuits, still requires court approval.
The coffee and doughnut chain says the deal would see eligible app users receive a free hot beverage and baked good.
Tim Hortons says in court documents it would also permanently delete any geolocation information it may have collected between April 1, 2019 and Sept. 30, 2020, and direct third-party service providers to do the same.
One free drink and a donut: We value your privacy (at a couple of bucks)?
Previous story: Tim Hortons Coffee App Broke Law by Constantly Recording Users' Movements
Tomorrow is the day that Meta expected would finally end its Cambridge Analytica woes. That's when a US district court in California is scheduled to preliminarily approve a $725 million settlement agreement that Meta believed would release the company of all related claims.
However, just days before Meta could reach that seeming finish line, the state of New Mexico has moved to intervene. In a court filing yesterday, New Mexico argued that Meta might be interpreting its settlement agreement wrong and claimed that, for New Mexico citizens, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from resolved.
To clarify whether Meta's agreement releases New Mexico's and others' claims and to ensure that the California court doesn't "inadvertently or otherwise release claims" raised in New Mexico's still-pending parallel action against Meta, New Mexico's attorneys have asked to be heard "briefly" at tomorrow's hearing.
[...]
[Update: A Meta spokesperson told Ars, "The attorneys representing New Mexico misstated our position, which we will explain to the Court."]
Previously:
Meta Settles Cambridge Analytica Scandal Case for $725m
Facebook Agrees to Settle Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit
Facebook Paid FTC $4.9B More than Required to Shield Zuckerberg, Lawsuit Alleges
Facebook Sued Over Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29, @08:43AM (7 children)
A little more background needed.
The fine is a drop in the bucket, but let's take it as a lesson learned. We need to actually expose these kinds of manipulations in order to innoculate society from (in the main) right wing propaganda. For that to work, we need prosecutions and testimony of those involved. Look at the people involved - Presidents, billionaires, CEOs - this is what shitstain scumbags look like, not poor men in hoodies like you'd imagine if you watched tHe neWs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by canopic jug on Thursday December 29, @09:51AM
Yeah. The fine barely even noticed as the cost of doing business. Facebook is only superficially about marketing but that is what gets all the attention even if mass manipulation of opinion is its core.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Nuke on Thursday December 29, @12:58PM (5 children)
I was about to mod this insightful until I read that you think it is mostly about stopping "right wing propaganda". You think it is only the right wing that wants to game the system? There are all sorts of reasons for maintaining privacy : non-political, commercial, as well as political on any part of the spectrum.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ox0000 on Thursday December 29, @01:23PM (2 children)
You agree with the basic premise of the post, to the point that you think it's insightful, and then you moan as soon as you realize it focuses on your in-group?
I don't think there was any claim that "it's only the right wing" who does this. However, in the context of this page's subject, it was _specifically_ the right wing who does this.
You also don't go about saying "I don't think F = G (m1 * m2 / r^2) is all that great because it doesn't also cover fluid-dynamics at the same time and water is subject to gravity, innit?"; that doesn't change the fact that the given definition of 'F' is still pretty darn good by itself.
Your desire for 'balance' in accusation is an accusation of yourself in and by itself. I thought the right wing didn't like the whole "you gotta be balanced" deal?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 29, @01:49PM
More like: "I don't think F = G (m1 * m2 / r^2) is all that great because it only covers (in the main) lunar orbits."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday December 29, @02:51PM
Indeed. We often don't get the irrationality and immorality of beliefs untill they are applied to us rather than to some nebulous out-group we don't care about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29, @03:38PM
N/T
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 29, @04:28PM
They just got convicted and received the largest fine EVER for this fraud. If it's a game the rightwingers just won the goddamn thing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snospar on Thursday December 29, @10:46AM (3 children)
So ALL that personal information was only worth $2-$3 dollars per person? I call bullshit. This personal information is making Google, Facebook, Amazon (etc) the richest companies on the planet, they all know it's worth way more than this paltry sum.
As ever, with enough money and enough lawyers you can buy yourself out of trouble. I'd be surprised if investors even notice that $725M blip in their accounts next year.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MIRV888 on Thursday December 29, @12:10PM
I came here to say exactly this.
$2.58 per person is a pittance to the end user, as 750 million is to Meta.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 29, @01:55PM
The requirement isn't just that you're rich and powerful, but also that the people that you harm mostly aren't rich or powerful. If you harm rich people, you can still get into trouble (e.g. Bernie Madoff).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29, @03:43PM
The information that these companies are parties to mass propaganda is worth more than $2.58. The existence of mass propaganda in social media is the prize here, not the paltry penalty. The messenger is willing but let's remember who the customer is.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ox0000 on Thursday December 29, @01:35PM (5 children)
Is that USD 725,000,000 another one of those "but they do not admit to any wrongdoing?"
From the article:
Why, yes thank you for asking, yes it is! That's 725 million saying they did nothing wrong!
Furthermore:
That's 725 million that they didn't really have to spend (because they did nothing wrong, you see) but wildly, voluntary removing it from their own account is in the fiduciary interest of their shareholders. And in fact, that's 725 million dollars saying they not only did nothing wrong, but 725 million dollars saying "we will continue to fuck people over the way we did before that is not totally not a wrong thing to do, as evidenced by this 725 million dollars we are paying to make this thing that is not wrong, go away"
We pierce the corporate veil for accounting fraud and (should) hold directors, executives, and board members accountable for those, why do we not do this for privacy invasion?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 29, @01:55PM (3 children)
> why do we not do this for privacy invasion?
I realise it what rhetorical question, but: on a large scale accounting fraud can cause big economic problems, start recessions and feed bubble behaviour; on a small scale, it can cause people to lose their life savings and end up in terrible personal circumstances. What is the equivalent problem that privacy invasion can cause?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday December 30, @12:57AM (2 children)
Getting arrested because you said something negative about the authorities that they were able to trace back to you. A lot of police states have strong violations of privacy in order to crack down on dissent.
Getting arrested because a crime was committed for which the criminal must have had properties X which is thought to be uncommon in the general population, if only because no one admits to it. From snooping on the entire population, the authorities have determined that you have property X too, so you must be the guilty one. Even worse, determining that you must be guilty of something because you have property X and thus, you get checked every time a crime occurs. For example, property X here can be the wrong ethnicity, religious beliefs, books you read, sexual preferences, or weird mental illness condition. If they aren't allowed to keep such data on file, due to privacy protection, then they can't persecute you for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31, @05:47AM (1 child)
Just an aside, I don't think police states are too fussy about developing an iron-clad case when someone in authority decides to persecute you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 01, @01:31AM
How does someone in authority decide to persecute you? This data is one way you can stand out enough.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday December 29, @09:11PM
Your comment is bang on. I was actually reading a similar thing this morning about Jeffrey Epstein:
No admission of any wrongdoing.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/29/us-virgin-islands-suing-jpmorgan-chase-over-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday December 29, @06:10PM (2 children)
is one thousand more stories like this and Meta will change their name again (maybe Feta for all the sour cheese they deliver?) and people will forget about all the harm their doing again!
Easy peasy.
Well, that and a few more thousand apologies from Zuckerberg....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Touché) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 29, @08:56PM (1 child)
Feta isn't sour. It's salty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31, @05:50AM
Nailed the bastard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29, @08:37PM (1 child)
People put all their personal info out there for anyone to see, and then bitch when someone collates it?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Ox0000 on Thursday December 29, @11:42PM
If a knowledgeable person would do this, then sure, they have no defense. But not everyone understands the intricacies of privacy, online or otherwise. It takes effort and time to understand this, and it does not come naturally (to almost all other people).
Many people were szuckered into using fuckface with promises of "it's private, we pinky promise, look, we even have switches you can flip to make things 'more private', they totally work" and do not rightfully deserve the derision you point at them(*).
(*) That being said, once they have been brought up to speed on the debacle that is fuckface, then they no longer deserve this layer of protection. And there is a point to be made for "who still doesn't know about this, and how big is the rock they've been living under", so I'll hand you that...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday December 30, @03:24AM (2 children)
But I fail to see why $700 million isn't adequate given the lack of evidence for harm here. That's a lot more than a drop in the bucket for Facebook's profit stream (a genuine drop in a bucket is worse than four orders of magnitude), it means they lost money on the Cambridge Analytica (CA) thing, and creates precedent for future, higher fines should they continue their misdeeds. As to the lack of harm, we only have CA's word that they have a product that does anything significant.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday December 30, @05:01PM
IIRC, Cambridge Analytica used the "poll" (I think it was more than one) to not just get the information provided by those who answered the poll, but *all* the information the user had access to -- including their FB friends' data.
So no, it wasn't just some random poll that got Cambridge Analytica all that data. It was an unauthorized dump of user data, not just of those who answered the poll, but of the FB *friends* of those folks as well. It was done on purpose, specifically to gather as much user data as possible, to help their efforts on Ted Cruz's, Donald Trump's and others' behalf.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31, @06:14AM
I suppose the nefarious part is using an innocent family & friends feed to manipulate people towards extreme political positions. Perhaps akin to the CIA infiltrating a vaccine program - not a good look. Plus the mingling of commercial and political interests, especially done covertly, has the whiff of propaganda about it.