META Stole Your Data. Now Zuck Has To Pay Montanans

Looks like Facebook's parent company, Meta, is going to pay for the Cambridge Analytical leak.  Literally.

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The Associated Press reports that Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit that alleges they allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest user information from millions of users.  In 2018 it was revealed that they paid for access to Facebook users in order to target voters in the 2016 presidential campaign.

What EXACTLY is the scandal with Cambridge Analytica?

According to Wikipedia, in the 2016 presidential election, they were hired by Trump to target known Trump voters and swing voters.  The ads for people who were thought to be Trump supporters showed a victorious Trump and information on local polling stations.  The ads for people who were thought to be swing voters showed some of Trump's more famous supporters and negative ads concerning Hillary Clinton.  (I'm not bashing either candidate here.  It's just the facts of the case.)

Seems like normal campaign stuff EXCEPT users didn't know their information had been sold and was used to target them for these campaigns.

If they did it for the presidential campaign, you can bet they did it for other things, as well.  All on the sly with stolen information.

How do you know if you can make a claim against META?

Anyone who was a Facebook user, in America, between May 24, 2007 to December 22, 2022 can file a claim.  You can do it here, on the settlement page.

How much will META have to pay each person?

Right now, there's no way to know.  When it's a class action lawsuit, it all depends on who makes a claim on the settlement.  There's no way to know what it will be until the deadline to make a claim has passed.

When will META send out payments?

The final hearing is September 27, 2023.  Montanans won't see any payments made until after that hearing.