Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash
Facebook’s involvement in a privacy scandal with Cambridge Analytica will go down in history as one of the tech giant’s worst dark pattern practices because it might have influenced the 2016 presidential election in the United States. The data leak that affected over 86 million Facebook users across the U.S. and Europe happened between 2015 and 2018.
The scandal resulted in a private class action lawsuit, which ended in late December with Facebook/Meta agreeing to pay nearly a billion in the settlement. Up to 280 million Facebook users are estimated to receive payments from the $725 million fine. The motion to settle requires approval from a judge, which is scheduled for March 2023.