Facebook is Settling Potential Cambridge Analytica Class Action Suit

"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," reports the Associated Press: Terms of the settlement reached by Meta Platforms, 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 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.
Some background from UPI: The Facebook users sued the platform in June 2018, accusing it of violating privacy rules when it shared personal data with Cambridge Analytica and other third parties.... In March 2018, whistleblower and Cambridge Analytica co-founder Christopher Wylie revealed the data mining company was holding onto Facebook user data without the users' consent even after Facebook told the company to delete it.
Reuters describes Cambridge Analytica as "the now-defunct British political consultancy."

Politico reports that now lawyers for both Facebook and the plaintiffs have "asked the judge to put the lawsuit on hold for 60 days to allow the parties to 'finalize a written settlement agreement' and present it for preliminary approval by the court."

What's the benefit of settling?

[Catvid-22]

I'm just curious about these "class action" law suits. Does a company actually benefit from settling a legal case filed by an amorphous entity? Would settling actually prevent other FB users from filing their own legal cases? (Insert here the usual rant about the lawyers standing to benefit the most.)

It makes it go away

[rsilvergun]

This way it leaves the news cycle and you'll forget about it in 6 months. Meanwhile Facebook very likely made more money by selling the data then they'll lose on the settlement. Not directly, but indirectly in the form of the massive tax breaks both Facebook and its owners received as a result of people aligned with Cambridge analytica coming into power. It's quite literally trillions of dollars in tax breaks that went to the top 20,000 individuals.

The same thing has happened with Alex Jones where while he lost the battle he won the war. By the time the laws kick in that reduce and cap the payouts he'll have to make the amount of money he got far exceeds the cost of the trial.

This is a major problem in our civilization right now where bad behavior is not controlled. I'm not necessarily talking about punishment but rather stepping in and preventing the bad behavior. The way you would do that if you were serious is that the fines would be so significant that people committing these acts would be bankrupted and lose the relevance and power that comes with the enormous wealth that they're bad behavior generated for them.

The problem is it's very difficult to get people thinking that money is power and that if you don't want someone to have unlimited power to control you you can't let them have unlimited money. It's funny because if you say money is powered everyone agrees and if you say power corrupts everyone agrees but if you combine those two concepts and take them to their logical conclusion suddenly everyone's talking about socialism.

It's because it's very difficult to get people to understand that just because you're going to take away zuckerberg's billions so that he can't tell you what to do with that money doesn't mean you're going to show up and take away their savings account or 401k. People don't really understand that there's a difference between having a billion dollars in the bank or more and having just enough that when you can't work anymore you can retire

Re:

[shanen]

I think I am basically in concurrence with this FP branch, but I have a couple of related reactions:

My main reaction is that however much money FB (FaceBook AKA Meta) paid to make this go away, it wasn't enough money. The social damage, especially in the form of long-term psychological damage, caused by FB has been so huge that any penalty that leaves FB in existence and essentially unchanged is too small a penalty.

My secondary but higher level reaction is that lying is too profitable these days. However Yo

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Trillions in tax breaks? I'd love to see a reference for that. The entire federal budget in 2018 (pre Covid) was 3.64 trillion.

So you are in favor of a flat tax? By definition, that's what you get when you eliminate all the breaks and treat everyone the same. Although my guess is your flat tax would be around 90% instead of the commonly suggested 10 to 20% range.

Re:

[splutty]

One thing is that when they settle, they can probably avoid having certain people be questioned under oath.

If the results of that could be far more devastating than paying large sums of money right now, then settling is definitely preferable.

Another reason is precedent. If it actually comes to a court case, and certain outcomes of that are very negative to the company, that's then in the official record.

This then makes it far easier for others to sue for the same/similar causes. This is something large comp

This will amount to nothing

[Eubeleus]

but a cash out for a few who signed onto the lawsuit (note: they did NOT certify it as a class-action, so nobody else will have any damages made whole) and their lawyers and some fakely-earnest camera-savvy hand-wringing and waving about vague things that will "change" and "improve" and "protect" your "privacy."

the only ones making money on this is

[FudRucker]

the attorneys, those that had their data sold wont get anything, and if they are dumb enough to continue using facebook aka meta it will continue to datamine and exploit them

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

It's not like the datamining has stopped. Fortunately Facebook seems to be losing steam. We can only hope that more users will abandon the platform.

How is FB going to settle with Hillary and voters?

[tekram]

How? and how to make right 4 years of damages and revert the SCOTUS judges confirmed by the last POTUS and claw back the 2017 $1.9 Trillion corporate tax cut?

Could well be responsible for Brexit

[UpnAtom]

Britain is now entering a 15 month recession according to the Bank of England, with a PM who claimed Britain imported 2/3rds if it's cheese (it's 2.3%).
It's hard to believe anyone could be worse than Johnson but it seems Brexitland has managed it.

Brexshit has made Britain's economy such a basket case that it was recently compared to a third world country by a city economist.

Would Putin have gone up against an allied French and British resistance if this Moldovan/Russian criminal hadn't broken the law and st

So?

[ashinybrowncoat]

CA wrote the book on election tampering and even used to brag about how well they could change the outcome of an election. The U.S. was not the first country they manipulated and FB directly enabled CA to do so. So our entire election was directly tampered with and FB is still in business. The question we ask now is why FB still exists but we already know why, don't we? A settlement doesn't really mean anything.