Facebook has reached a preliminary settlement in a long-running lawsuit seeking damages from the social network for giving third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access to private user data.

According to a court document filed Friday in a San Francisco court, Facebook says it is proposing a “settlement-in-principle” plan and has asked for a 60-day stay “to finalize and submit a written agreement.” to the court,” reports Agerpres with reference to AFP.

In the social network, neither the price nor the terms of the agreement in this collective process are specified.

Asked by AFP for comment, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it had “no comment at this time.”

The deal comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CEO Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation in June after 14 years at the company, are set to testify in court in September as part of the scandal.

Cambridge Analytica collected and used the personal data of 87 million Facebook users

In a lawsuit launched in 2018, Facebook users accused the social network of violating privacy rules by sharing their data with third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, a firm linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Cambridge Analytica, which has since shut down, collected and used the personal data of 87 million Facebook users the platform gave it access to without their consent.

This information was used to develop software that would guide the voting of American voters in favor of Donald Trump.

In July 2019, the federal government fined Facebook five billion dollars for “deceiving” its users and introduced an independent control over the management of personal data.

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has banned access to data from thousands of apps suspected of abuse, limiting the amount of information available to developers in general and making it easier for users to calibrate limits on sharing personal data. .

• Read also: Consequences of the Cambridge Analytica scandal