Cast your mind back to the year 2023, when news first spread about the massive $725 million class action settlement connected to Facebook’s handling of user data. At that time, many of us were encouraged to submit a claim in order to secure our portion of the payout. Now, after years of legal wrangling and extensive administrative processing, those promised funds are finally being distributed to qualifying individuals.
Earlier this week, I personally received confirmation via email that my claim in the matter formally known as *In re: Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation* had been reviewed and approved. This was the class action settlement that encompassed virtually anyone who held a Facebook account between 2007 and 2022 — a fifteen-year span during which a great number of users’ data was collected, shared, and in some cases misused. The litigation arose from serious allegations of mishandling personal information, including accusations that Facebook — now operating under the corporate name Meta — permitted third parties such as the controversial data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, along with other external groups, to gain improper access to private user details without adequate consent or safeguards in place.
After years of uncertainty, today marked the tangible outcome of that process: I found the money deposited directly into my PayPal account. The total amount of my individual payout came to precisely $38.36. Although modest in size, the payment serves as a symbolic resolution to one of the most widely discussed privacy controversies of the last decade. Several colleagues of mine at *The Verge*, along with a few of their family members, also reported receiving distributions. Most of their payments hovered around the same figure — approximately thirty-eight dollars — though at least one person ended up with a significantly smaller sum, closer to just five dollars. This range of outcomes highlights the way compensation was calculated and divided among the enormous pool of eligible claimants.
Chances are, many readers of this very piece have likewise seen payouts arrive in their accounts or will be receiving them shortly. Which leads to a natural, somewhat lighthearted question: now that the long-awaited settlement funds are finally in hand, however modest they may be, what exactly are we all planning to purchase with our share of this historic case?
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/tech/778472/facebook-gave-our-data-to-cambridge-analytica-and-all-i-got-was-this-38-36
