Mashable: Recently a report stated that Mark Zuckerberg knew about Cambridge Analytica's concern much before the official investigation.

According to court documents filed on Thursday, Facebook's parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running class action lawsuit in the United States alleging that it allowed third parties access to users' personal data.

Reuters (via Politico) reports that the document states, "Plaintiffs humbly seek that the Court preliminarily approves the $725 million non-reversionary Settlement".

According to the document, this is "the most Facebook has ever paid to conclude a private class action" and "the largest recovery ever secured in a data privacy class action."

The plaintiffs claim that "all Facebook users in the United States during the Class Period," which begins on May 24, 2007, and ends on December 22, 2022, fall within the "class size," or the total number of people affected by this lawsuit.

The court in San Francisco must yet approve the statement; a hearing has been set for March of next year.

In 2018, Facebook users filed lawsuits against the corporation, claiming that Facebook had illegally shared their personal information with third parties. Among these was the infamous British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which played a role in Trump's victorious 2016 presidential campaign as some reports say.

Recently a report stated that Mark Zuckerberg knew about Cambridge Analytica's concern much before the official investigation. Zuckerberg said he was unaware of the data leak when Facebook staff found it in the early 2010s, but his deposition transcript suggests otherwise. In 2017, he may have considered Cambridge Analytica a potential election concern. This shows that Facebook staff had opportunities to brief Zuckerberg on the leak before headlines emerged in 2018, but chose not to.

The imminent litigation, however, required Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and Olivan to testify once more at an upcoming hearing. It's obvious that this is something Meta didn't want, and it won't occur now that a compromise has been made.