Contents
Facebook Class Settlement
Facebook Settlement website | File A Claim
Numerous lawsuits were brought on behalf of Facebook users who allege that Facebook (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) shared or otherwise made accessible to third parties user data without permission, and did not sufficiently monitor and enforce third-party use of that data.
The Honorable Vince Chhabria of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California was appointed to oversee these lawsuits, which have been consolidated as In re: Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, Case No. 3:18-md-02843-VC (N.D. Cal.). Meta expressly denies any liability or wrongdoing.
Who Is Eligible?
You are included in this Settlement as a Settlement Class Member if you were a Facebook user in the United States between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022.
How Much Will I Get?
The answer depends on how many Settlement Class Members submit valid claims and how long you were a user on Facebook during the Class Period.
The Net Settlement Fund (after all costs) will be allocated to Settlement Class Members who submit valid claims. The Settlement Administrator will assign each Authorized Claimant one point for each month in which the Authorized Claimant had an activated Facebook account during the Class Period. Each Authorized Claimant will receive that per-point amount multiplied by the number of points they were assigned.
Important Dates
- August 25, 2023 – Claim Deadline
- September 7, 2023 at 1:00 PM PDT – Final Approval Hearing
Our Verdict
The total pot is $725M and there are hundreds of millions of eligible claimants. We don’t know how many people will file a claim; I wouldn’t count on the final payout being more than $5-$20, depending on how long you were a user. Still can’t hurt to file a get a few dollars from this.
This settlement will cover most US users since it covers years 2007 – 2022. There is a separate Facebook settlement we wrote about last year which covers users from 2010 – 2011. See more class action lawsuits we’ve covered at this link.
Hat tip to reader Jason
Reminder: Disable Ad blockers before filing a claim. I use uBlock Origin and Payment Selection went blank.
Oh the irony, Facebook not paying out users for blocking ads
Funny, before I saw your comment, I filed and also use Ublock but claim went through without a hitch. Guess YMMV.
Serious question , can you file on behalf of a deceased family member ?
Bumping this question
Search the FAQs on the settlement website. Your answer is there.
I wish that they could charge them much more for selling the personal data (725M is a very small settlement). I believe that they should enforce FB to pay each FB user in a monthly basis, because the users are generating the data (or gold) for them and they take the advantage of such gold mines in various ways.
All “free” services mean you’re the product being sold.
Does that include this website? 🙂
Yes.
They have ads here. They make revenue from referrals. They are selling you deals.
To be fair over here all the best deals are being “sold”. As opposed to many other places where they push only deals with their referral links.
Not like some others do, only link based referrals and not tie ups(shilling or fake review) as far as i have seen.
In for my .08 cent check in 2027
Considering I couldn’t even remember the email address I used for most of my FB years I’m optimistic a chunk of people are gonna screw this up and disqualify themselves so those left standing ought to see at least $1 each!
Since this is only for Us customers and roughly 200m people might have used FB between the years mentioned.
So 720m divided by 200m … approximately each users may get 3.2$ . Potential for more $s…if less people claim
You really think anything close to 200 million people fill out this form?
I doubt it will be only young people boomer like my dad not filing it unless I force him.
yungs too busy making 10000x in crypto to bother with this
You’re forgetting the big piece of the pie that the lawyers are getting.
You’ll just get crumbs, if any.
I had a facebook account. I didn’t use my real name or real city or real workplace. The only thing real was phone number and I did connect with friends, family, and co-workers who are real. I wonder if I’m eliglble.
Cool story, Presly from Hawaii.
Facebook has your real name, real city, and real workplace.
Mine as well…and I never even signed up.
people who installed the FB app auto agree to share their entire contact list. that’s how they mapped the entire world.
‘Shadow profiles.’ Some idiot from 3 jobs back let them scrap their address book and call history, and now they track me too, as though I have an account.
getting error messages with paypal and zelle. have to keep filling out the form. what fun.
Getting errors for all payment types. Payment is mandatory, cannot submit without it. Refreshing the page, blanks all info.
I sense a Equifax settlement expectation here. “Everyone gets $100!” down to $5 lol
There was an IL state only for FB biometrics, we actually got a few hundred dollars from it lol. Was rather surprising to find it in my Paypal one day hahaha.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/free-cash-coming-facebook-users-110005972.html
25% of it goes to lawyers (plus their ‘legal expenses’ on top, lol),
240 million eligible people and publicized all over the internet,
– yeah, might not get rich from this one… 😉
Also FYI you can only claim one FB account even if you had multiple, as per the linked article.
Still worth the effort if it makes Meta (or its investors) finally understand that their business model is crap.
They had to pay the FTC 5 billion already for not protecting user data, so I’m unsure if this extra 0.7 billion really is gonna make a difference to them.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions-facebook
Oh you sweet innocent child.
Meta’s 2022 gross profit was $29 billion. B. And it was a pretty bad year for them, 2021 was $47 B.
This 0.7 B is a rounding error.
I’d say tax deductible lunch money for C-suites, not rounding error.
yeah, its so crappy that almost 40% of earth’s population uses their services…lol
Don’t know about you but I’m going to do this in multiplayer mode. Have 4 fake fb accounts from way back when amex had twitter/fb deals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLY-kx7I2m4
I used to have 27 accounts.
One payout per account?
Multiplayer mode. Just need that many family members.
Can’t wait to get my .25c of the pot!