Meta Platforms

The record

Compiled by the MrScandal desk from the documents below · Desk editor Laima Ērkšķe-Kreicberga · Nov 10, 2026

The Facebook settlement most people search for is the $725 million class settlement in In re Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, the federal case in San Francisco that grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It covered U.S. Facebook users from May 24, 2007 to December 22, 2022, and the claim deadline was August 25, 2023. Judge Vince Chhabria approved it in October 2023, the last objector appeals ended in May 2025, and payments began in September 2025. About 19 million validated claimants received an average of $29.43, from $4.89 to $38.37 depending on how many months they had an active account. A second round of uncashed money began going out on June 9, 2026, only to people who cashed the first payment. Meta denied violating any law.

Its regulatory record starts with a 2011 Federal Trade Commission privacy settlement. In 2019 the FTC imposed a $5 billion penalty for violating that order and required Mark Zuckerberg to certify compliance, and in 2023 it moved to tighten the order, including a ban on profiting from data of users under 18. The FTC stayed that proceeding in July 2025 while Meta's court challenges run, and the dispute was still being briefed in federal court in Washington in 2026. Facebook also paid the SEC $100 million in 2019, settled an Illinois biometric privacy class action for $650 million, and agreed in 2024 to pay Texas $1.4 billion over five years over facial recognition.

The Meta trials and verdicts of 2026 came mostly from state courts. In New Mexico, a Santa Fe jury set $375 million in penalties in March in the state's child-safety case, and in August Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid added $567 million for a youth mental health abatement fund and five years of court-supervised changes. In a second New Mexico case over Facebook's privacy statements in the Cambridge Analytica era, a jury found more than 43 million violations in September and a judge set the penalty at $25 billion in October, with 15 percent annual interest. Meta said it would appeal. A Los Angeles jury also found Meta and YouTube negligent in the first social media addiction bellwether trial.

In August 2026 Meta agreed to pay 51 states and territories at least $12.1 billion over ten years, and up to $17.1 billion, to resolve youth-harm suits, plus a separate settlement of more than $1 billion with Texas. Its federal antitrust exposure narrowed when Chief Judge James Boasberg ruled after a 2025 bench trial that the FTC had not proved Meta holds a monopoly; the FTC has appealed. In Europe it has drawn a 1.2 billion euro data-transfer fine from Ireland, a 797.72 million euro antitrust fine over Facebook Marketplace and a 200 million euro Digital Markets Act fine.

Roles and honours on the record

• 2011 Respondent, FTC privacy consent order requiring independent privacy audits every two years for 20 years source
• 2012-2014 Acquirer of Instagram (2012) and WhatsApp (2014), deals the FTC approved at the time source
• 2018-2025 Defendant, In re Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, N.D. Cal. No. 3:18-md-02843-VC, resolved by a $725 million class settlement source
• 2020-present Bound by the 2020 FTC privacy order and $5 billion civil penalty, approved by the federal court in April 2020 source
• 2020-present Defendant, FTC v. Meta Platforms, D.D.C. No. 20-cv-3590; appellee, D.C. Circuit No. 26-5028 source
• 2021-present Meta, the renamed Facebook company, parent of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp source