://www.thestandard.com.hk/comment"}}]}]17:T6e8,Facebook has reached a preliminary agreement in a long-running lawsuit seeking damages from the social network for allowing third parties, including the company Cambridge Analytica, to access users' private data.

A document filed in a San Francisco court reveals that Facebook says it is submitting a draft "agreement in principle" and has requested a stay of proceedings for 60 days to finalize it.

The deal comes as Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation in June, were due to testify in court in September as part of the scandal.

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

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

This information was allegedly used to develop software steering US voters in favor of Trump.

In 2019, federal authorities fined Facebook US$5 billion (HK$39 billion) for misleading its users and imposed independent oversight of its personal data management.

Since the Cambridge Analytica broke, Facebook has removed access to its data from thousands of apps.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

PHOTO: REUTERS

Facebook agrees to settle massive data breach case