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In 2021, Meta registered 71,970 workers worldwide.
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Meta’s revenues were approximately $117 billion.
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Meta generated $114.93 billion in advertising revenue that year.
The technology industry continues to be one of the most news-driven in the world. Recently, it was revealed that the owner of Facebook, Meta Platforms, agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing the social networking giant of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access to users’ personal information.
Facebook, which in 2021 had 2.74 billion users in January, 11.8 percent more than in 2020, for this 2022 report Mark Zuckerberg’s social network now accumulates 2 thousand 910 million, plus 6.2 percent. YouTube and WhatsApp accompany her for another year on the podium.
In this sense, Zuckerberg still brings together most of the social networks with the most users in the world, as is WhatsApp with two billion users, Messenger with 988 million users and Instagram with 1,478 million users.
Goal and case Cambridge Analytica
The Cambridge Analytica case continues to make headlines around the world as the proposed settlement, which was revealed in a court filing Thursday night, December 22, would settle a long-standing lawsuit. sparked by revelations in 2018 that Facebook had enabled the British political consultancy to access data on up to 87 million users.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers qualified the settlement proposed as the largest ever reached in a United States data privacy class action lawsuit and the most Meta has paid to settle a class action lawsuit.
“This landmark settlement will provide significant relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case,” said lead attorneys for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, in a joint statement.
In that sense, it was revealed that Meta did not admit irregularities as part of the agreement, which is subject to the approval of a federal judge in San Francisco.
The company also said in a statement that reaching an agreement was “in the best interest of our community and shareholders.”
“Over the past three years, we’ve renewed our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program,” Meta said.
Let’s remember that Cambridge Analytica worked for the successful presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016 and Gained access to personal information from millions of Facebook accounts for the purpose of profiling and selecting voters.
On that occasion, Cambridge Analytica, which no longer exists, obtained that information without the consent of the users from a researcher who Facebook had allowed him to implement an application on its social network that collected data from millions of its users.
That scandal prompted government investigations into its privacy practices, lawsuits, and a high-profile congressional hearing where the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, was questioned by lawmakers.
In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $5 billion to resolve a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its privacy practices and $100 million to resolve Securities and Exchange Commission claims that it misled investors about misusing user data.
In that regard, Thursday’s settlement resolved claims by Facebook users that the company violated various federal laws and by allowing app developers and business partners to collect your personal data without your consent across the board.
In the case, lawyers for the users alleged that Facebook misled them into thinking they could maintain control over personal data, when in fact it allowed thousands of preferred outsiders to gain access.
In that same context, the settlement covers an estimated 250 million to 280 million Facebook users, according to Thursday’s court filing. The amount an individual user receives will depend on how many people file valid claims on one side of the settlement.
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