Some students might receive compensation from Meta lawsuit
If you’re looking for an extra top up to your monthly ‘club & pub’ funds, Meta could be making a contribution to your bank balance—but be sure to check your spam folder. The Silicon Valley tech giant is in the process of issuing payouts to Facebook users as part of a USD $725 million class action settlement, contacting beneficiaries with instructions via email.
Reuters reported that nearly 90-million US-based persons who had profiles on the social media platform between May 2007 and December 2022 were eligible to file a claim, even if they were no longer active users.
The lawsuit, In re: Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, sees claimants receiving payments of up to $38 (£28.77) via a prepaid Mastercard debit card, PayPal, Venmo, or direct deposit.
A website, facebookuserprivacysettlement.com, has been created to help litigants receive their share of the funds. Claimants are automatically included in the lawsuit, and have been informed that their rights “are affected whether you act or don’t act.”
Hope Rathband-Lake, a postgraduate student at the University of Glasgow, believes that more should be done to prevent future violations: “I think that tech giants should be doing more, and there should be more stringent punishments for data usage violations. These payouts are more like taxes for these multinational corporations instead of payouts. More should be done to tackle the problem at the root rather than a reactionary approach.”
Meta Platforms, Inc. saw a similar lawsuit in Australia last year after the Australian Government’s Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) agreed to a AUD $50 million payment program to settle civil penalty proceedings. Individuals who were in Australia “for more than 30 days between November 2013 and December 2015, and either installed the This is Your Digital Life app, or who were Facebook friends of an individual” who had the app installed could receive financial compensation.
The company faced similar anti-privacy allegations in the UK after human rights activist, Tanya O’Carroll, took them to court over targeted advertisements. A move that could set a precedent for millions of UK-based “users of online platforms”, according to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.
Can £20 be considered suitable compensation for the misuse of one’s personal information? Maybe not, but two or three ‘complementary’ pints down at the pub might change your mind.
