Mark Zuckerberg, along with current and former high-ranking employees at Meta, reached an $8 billion settlement for damages caused by repeatedly allowing violations of Facebook users’ privacy.
A lawyer for the shareholders told Judge Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery on Thursday that the case was settled. Details of the settlement were not disclosed, and defense lawyers did not address the judge, according to Reuters.
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Shareholders at Meta sued Zuckerberg, billionaire venture capitalist and board member Marc Andreessen, and others to hold them liable for billions of dollars in fines and legal costs the company paid in recent years in legal battles over privacy.
They alleged that the current and former board members failed to supervise the company’s compliance with a 2012 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to stop collecting and sharing personal data without users’ consent. They also claimed that Zuckerberg knowingly ran the company as a way to harvest data illegally.
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One former board member, Jeffrey Zients, testified Wednesday that Meta did not agree to the FTC fine to save Zuckerberg from legal liability, as the shareholders had alleged.
The case stemmed from the revelation that data from millions of Facebook accounts was accessed by a political consulting firm working for President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. Those revelations led to the FTC’s $5 billion fine at the time.