The story began in 2018 when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had paid a Facebook app developer to obtain user data. Facebook asked for 60 days to finalize the settlement agreement.

Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Group has reached a tentative agreement in a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing third parties, including British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, access to user data.

According to a document filed Friday in a San Francisco court, Meta agreed to a “draft agreement in principle” and requested a 60-day stay of the action to finalize it.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and board member and former COO Sheryl Sandberg had been given a deadline of 20 September to submit to depositions in the final phase of pre-trial evidence gathering.

In 2018, it emerged that Cambridge Analytica had paid a Facebook app developer to access the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users. This data was used to target voters during Donald Trump’s victorious 2016 campaign for the US presidency.

Following the revelations, Zuckerberg submitted to a congressional hearing on the data-sharing scandal.

The lawsuit argues that the privacy breach shows that Facebook is a “data broker and surveillance company” and not just a social network.

Facebook has about 2 billion users worldwide