Zuckerberg settles with shareholders over Cambridge Analytica

Mark Zuckerberg and shareholders have reached a settlement to avoid prosecution in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The $8 billion class action lawsuit filed against Zuckerberg and other company executives accused Meta executives of failing to disclose the risks associated with information used by Cambridge Analytica, one of the companies that supported Donald Trump's victory in his 2016 election campaign.

With the plea agreement, Meta's managers and board members will avoid testifying at the Cambridge Analytica scandal trial. The lawsuit was filed in 2018 by a group of then-Facebook shareholders against several board members, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his former right-hand man Sheryl Sandberg. The shareholders accused the company's top management of failing to ensure the protection of their users' data, allowing Cambridge Analytica to improperly access the information of millions of users.

One of the shareholders' lawyers informed the judge at the beginning of the second day of the trial that a settlement had been reached, but did not disclose the terms. Zuckerberg and Sandberg were scheduled to testify in the coming days as part of the proceedings.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted in 2018 after a professor provided the company with data on millions of users a few years earlier, which he was allowed to analyze but shouldn't have shared. The data collected was used for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign victory.