Facebook has begun distributing payments to millions of users as part of a historic $725 million settlement over claims the platform misused personal data. The payments, which started rolling out in September 2025, represent the largest data privacy settlement ever approved in the United States.
The settlement stems from a class-action lawsuit filed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where up to 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested without consent, as per Newsweek. The data was then allegedly used for political advertising during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, agreed to the settlement in December 2022 but denied any wrongdoing.
