In recent years, Facebook has been continuously involved in major scandals related to harming the interests of users, and has also receiveda series of criticisms from countries around the world. Despite changing the company name to Meta in hopes of changing people's negative views, the world's largest social network still cannot escape"shadow" of the past.
Meta’s most recent lawsuit, which ended on February 14, involved Facebook’s collection of data from web browsers. After losing the case, Facebook was required to delete all relevant data and pay plaintiffs based on how much they were affected by Facebook’s tracking.
In the terms, the tracking was initially legal because it was given the user's permission, and Facebook also claimed that it stopped tracking when the user logged out of their social network account. However, Facebook later violated this term. It was discovered that users' browsing data was still being sent to the company via the plug-in, even when the user logged out of Facebook.
The case dragged on for 10 years, with both sides repeatedly appealing. Despite previous wins, in 2020, the US Court of Appeals rejected Facebook’s arguments, saying that the illegal copying and monetization of personal data would cause economic harm. Facebook’s appeals to the Supreme Court were all denied.
Responding to Variety, a Meta representative said: "Reaching a settlement in this case is in the best interests of our community and shareholders. We are pleased to have overcome the issue."
Last year, Meta also had to pay $650 million for privacy violations related to facial recognition technology in Facebook's photo tagging feature. Currently, Facebook continues to face a major lawsuit in the US related to the violation of people's privacy with facial recognition technology over the past decade. The lawsuit was filed in the Harrison District Court of Texas (USA) on February 14. If it loses the lawsuit, Facebook will likely have to pay compensation of up to hundreds of billions of dollars.
