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Title: Meta Investors, Mark Zuckerberg Reach Settlement To End $8 Billion
Trial Over Facebook Privacy Litigation

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/20172...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Mark Zuckerberg and
current and former directors and officers of Meta Platforms agreed on
Thursday to settle claims seeking $8 billion for the damage they allegedly
caused the company by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users'
privacy, a lawyer for the shareholders told a Delaware judge on Thursday. The
parties did not disclose details of the settlement and defense lawyers did
not address the judge, Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery.
McCormick adjourned the trial just as it was to enter its second day and she
congratulated the parties. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Sam Closic, said the
agreement just came together quickly. Billionaire venture capitalist Marc
Andreessen, who is a defendant in the trial and a Meta director, was
scheduled to testify on Thursday. Shareholders of Meta sued Zuckerberg,
Andreessen and other former company officials including former Chief
Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in hopes of holding them liable for
billions of dollars in fines and legal costs the company paid in recent
years. The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 after
finding that it failed to comply with a 2012 agreement with the regulator to
protect users' data. The shareholders wanted the 11 defendants to use their
personal wealth to reimburse the company. The defendants denied the
allegations, which they called "extreme claims." "This settlement may bring
relief to the parties involved, but it's a missed opportunity for public
accountability," said Jason Kint, the head of Digital Content Next, a trade
group for content providers. "Facebook has successfully remade the 'Cambridge
Analytica' scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unraveling of its
entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal,
unbridled sharing of personal data. That reckoning is now left unresolved."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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