Meta Platforms Agrees to $50 Million Settlement with Australia’s Privacy Watchdog
Meta Platforms has agreed to a $50 million settlement with Australia’s privacy watchdog, closing a long-drawn legal battle over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner had alleged that personal information of some Facebook users was being disclosed to the social media giant’s personality quiz app, This is Your Digital Life, as part of the broader scandal.
The breaches were first reported by the Guardian in early 2018, and Facebook received fines from regulators in the United States and the UK in 2019. Australia’s privacy regulator has been caught up in the legal battle with Meta since 2020, when it alleged that the personal data of 311,127 Australian Facebook users was “exposed to the risk of being disclosed” to consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and used for profiling purposes.
The Australian Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Tydd, said the settlement represents the largest ever payment dedicated to addressing concerns about the privacy of individuals in Australia. Meta, in turn, characterized the settlement as a “no admission” deal, which means that the company does not admit to any wrongdoing.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal involved the unauthorized harvesting of personal data from millions of Facebook users, which was then used for political advertising. The data was shared without users’ consent and was used to influence elections, including the 2016 US presidential election and the 2016 Brexit vote in the UK.
