Meta Platforms Inc. has reached an agreement to settle a long-running lawsuit alleging that Facebook illegally shared user data with the research firm Cambridge Analytica.
The preliminary settlement, revealed in a court filing late Friday, comes after it was revealed last month that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg would have to sit for up to six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers. The agreement’s terms were not disclosed.
In 2018, Facebook users sued the company after it was revealed that a UK research firm connected to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign obtained access to the data of up to 87 million of the social media network’s subscribers.
Consumer lawyers have steadily gained leverage in hard-fought battles over pretrial information sharing to pry into the company’s internal records to back up their claims that Facebook failed to safeguard their personal data. If Facebook’s parent company had lost the case, it could have been liable for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Last month’s court filing also revealed that Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg would have to testify. The depositions were scheduled to last until September 20.
In the filing on Friday, lawyers for both sides asked the judge presiding over the case to pause it in order to “facilitate the process of finalizing a written settlement agreement” and presenting it to the court for preliminary approval.
Meta refused to comment on the agreement.
Facebook claimed that its practices were disclosed in user agreements. It also stated that anyone who shares information on a social network should not expect to maintain their privacy.