Payments could soon go out for a $725M Facebook settlement. Who could receive money

(NOTE: Video in the player above is from a previous story)

Facebook users who filed a claim in a $725 million settlement years ago will soon finally receive their payouts.

Checks are set to be distributed starting this month and continuing for 10 weeks, according to a website dedicated to the settlement.

Originally, payments were expected to go out soon after the settlement was approved on Oct. 10, 2023. But two appeals were filed and eventually resolved on May 14, 2025. On May 22, the settlement was finalized.

This payment will be different from the checks many received as part of a separate Facebook settlement earlier this year.

That $90 million settlement with Facebook’s parent company involved the social media platform’s famous “Like” button. A class-action lawsuit had accused “Facebook of tracking its subscribers’ activities on non-Facebook websites – even while signed out of their Facebook accounts,” between April 22, 2010 and Sept. 25, 2011.

Here’s what to know:

What is the settlement for?

The settlement was reached with Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc. following a lawsuit, which alleged Facebook made users’ data available to third parties without their permission and claimed the platform did not monitor or enforce third-party access to the data they received. That includes the collection of data by now-defunct political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which went on to be used for political advertising on the platform.

Who is eligible to file a claim?

The guidelines for the settlement were expanded before the claim deadline to include even more users.

Anybody who was a U.S. Facebook user at any point between May 24, 2007 and Dec. 22, 2022 was eligible to file a claim.

Under the last update, individuals who held Facebook accounts during the class period of the lawsuit that are now deleted were also eligible to file a claim.

How much money could I receive in a payment?

The payment size for each individual ultimately depends on how long each person was a Facebook user and how many users ultimately file a claim before the deadline, the settlement administrator says.

Administrative and court costs will initially be deducted from the overall settlement total, creating a “net settlement fund,” which payments will be paid out of from.

The amount each claimant receives will then be determined by the length of Facebook usage and number of overall claimants.

Each eligible claimant will be assigned “one point for each month” they had an activated Facebook account during that window. Once the total number of claimants and their points have been determined, along with the total settlement fund amount, each person will then receive a designated amount, multiplied by their total number of points.

from NBC Chicago https://ift.tt/Kr5DGUb