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Facebook Settlement Payments Won’t Go Out Until Early 2025 (or Later)
By Pete Grieve MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
If you used Facebook in the U.S. between 2007 and 2022, you were eligible to submit a claim for this settlement.
Facebook users who filed claims to get a share of a massive privacy settlement stand to receive payouts of about $35, though they will need to be patient.
The $725 million class-action settlement agreement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was announced nearly two years ago back in December 2022, but there’s still little clarity as to when people will actually get their money. According to a notice that’s current as of Sept. 19, no one can be paid until two appeals are resolved, and the hearing for them will not be set “until the first half of 2025 or later.”
While it’s possible the payouts will come next year, even that doesn’t seem to be guaranteed.
The hearing will be followed by another delay, during which the court will decide on the merits of those appeals. And then there could be “additional proceedings that could further delay the distribution of settlement benefits after the appeal is decided,” according to the notice.
What is the Facebook lawsuit about?
The lawsuits that led to this settlement agreement are related to a 2018 scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The firm obtained personal Facebook data from up to 87 million users, mostly in the U.S., and the lawsuits allege Meta improperly shared the user data.
Meta denies that it violated any laws but agreed to the settlement to “avoid the costs and risks of a trial,” according to the settlement website.
Who will get a Facebook settlement payout?
If you used Facebook in the U.S. between 2007 and 2022, you were eligible to submit a claim for this settlement.
The deadline to claim money passed in August 2023, and the judge gave final approval after a hearing in October 2023.
Some 28 million people submitted timely claims, and more than 17 million of those had been preliminarily validated as of the last update, making it the largest settlement class in U.S. history. (By dollar amount, many other settlements have been bigger.)
How much is the Facebook settlement payout?
The median settlement payout is expected to be around $35, according to court filings.
The payouts won’t be the same for everyone: Longtime Facebook users stand to get more money from the settlement. Claimants will be awarded one “point” for each month they had an account during the more than 15-year eligibility period. The settlement money will be doled out based on how many of these points users have.
Claimants had several options for receiving payment, including PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, direct deposit, check or a prepaid Mastercard.
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Pete Grieve is a New York-based reporter who covers personal finance news. At Money, Pete covers trending stories that affect Americans’ wallets on topics including car buying, insurance, housing, credit cards, retirement and taxes. He studied political science and photography at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. Pete began his career as a professional journalist in 2019. Prior to joining Money, he was a health reporter for Spectrum News in Ohio, where he wrote digital stories and appeared on TV to provide coverage to a statewide audience. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and CNN Politics. Pete received extensive journalism training through Report for America, a nonprofit organization that places reporters in newsrooms to cover underreported issues and communities, and he attended the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in 2021. Pete has discussed his reporting in interviews with outlets including the Columbia Journalism Review and WBEZ (Chicago's NPR station). He’s been a panelist at the Chicago Headline Club’s FOIA Fest and he received the Institute on Political Journalism’s $2,500 Award for Excellence in Collegiate Reporting in 2017. An essay he wrote for Grey City magazine was published in a 2020 book, Remembering J. Z. Smith: A Career and its Consequence.