Enlarge / Facebook co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (credit: Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images North America )

Tomorrow is the day that Meta expected would finally end its Cambridge Analytica woes . That’s when a US district court in California is scheduled to preliminarily approve a $725 million settlement agreement that Meta believed would release the company of all related claims.

However, just days before Meta could reach that seeming finish line, the state of New Mexico has moved to intervene. In a court filing yesterday , New Mexico argued that Meta might be interpreting its settlement agreement wrong and claimed that, for New Mexico citizens, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from resolved.

To clarify whether Meta's agreement releases New Mexico’s and others’ claims and to ensure that the California court doesn’t “inadvertently or otherwise release claims” raised in New Mexico’s still-pending parallel action against Meta, New Mexico’s attorneys have asked to be heard “briefly” at tomorrow’s hearing.

Enlarge / A laptop showing the Facebook logo is held alongside a Cambridge Analytica sign at the entrance to the building housing the offices of Cambridge Analytica, in central London on March 21, 2018. - Facebook expressed outrage over the misuse of its data as Cambridge Analytica, the British firm at the centre of a major scandal rocking the social media giant, suspended its chief executive. (Photo by Daniel LEAL / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images) (credit: Daniel Leal / Getty Images )

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2018. The lawsuit came in the wake of Facebook's revelation that it had improperly shared data on 87 million users with Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy tied to former President Donald Trump's election campaign.

Cambridge Analytica got its access Facebook user data via an app developed by a third party. While only around 270,000 Facebook account-holders used the "This is Your Digital Life" app, the app's permissions allowed it access to data on those users' friends. The end result was a dataset covering 87 million users that the developer than passed on to Cambridge Analytica, in contravention of Facebook's terms of service. The vast majority of those in the dataset had not given the consultancy firm permission to access their data.

The unauthorized data sharing came to light in 2018 , when reporters from the New York Times and The Observer informed Facebook that Cambridge Analytica still had copies of the data, even though the UK-based firm had promised the social network back in 2015 that the data would be deleted.

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg )

It’s been four years since users alleging harm caused by the Cambridge Analytica scandal sued Facebook (now Meta) for selling tons of easily identifying personal information to third parties, allegedly doing so even when users thought they had denied consent. In 2018, plaintiffs alleged in a consolidated complaint that Facebook acted in “astonishingly reckless” ways and did “almost nothing” to protect users from the potential harms of this “intentionally” obscured massive data market. The company, they said, put 87 million users at “a substantial and imminent risk of identity theft, fraud, stalking, scams, unwanted texts, emails, and even hacking.” And users’ only option to avoid these risks was to set everything on Facebook to private—so even friends wouldn’t see their activity.

Because of Facebook’s allegedly deceptive practices, plaintiffs said that “Facebook users suffered concrete injury in ways that transcend a normal data breach injury.” Plaintiffs had gotten so far in court defending these claims that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was scheduled to take the stand for six hours this September, along with lengthy depositions scheduled for former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and current Meta Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan. However, it looks like none of those depositions will be happening now.

On Friday, a joint motion was filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It confirmed that the plaintiffs and Facebook had reached a settlement agreement that seems to have finally ended the class action lawsuit that Meta had previously said it hoped would be over by March 2023.

Enlarge (credit: Pool / Pool | Getty Images North America )

In 2018, when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified for a Senate hearing following the Cambridge Analytica scandal , his most frequent response to questions was some iteration of the evasive phrase “my team will get back to you.”

Four years later, plaintiffs in a subsequent California class action lawsuit claim that Meta’s team of designees on various topics have been just as unprepared to answer questions as Zuckerberg was before the Senate. Because of that, the plaintiffs are putting Zuckerberg back on the stand, hoping that six hours of deposing the billionaire and depositions from other high-level Meta executives will end a “long overdue discovery” process that the plaintiffs say has already dragged on too long.

“Much discovery work remains to be done,” the plaintiffs wrote this week in a joint case statement that includes a request for “approximately 35 more depositions.” In addition to Zuckerberg, former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg will be deposed for possibly longer than five hours, and current Meta Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan will be deposed for as long as three hours. All depositions have been scheduled through September 20, which the statement says will result in Meta missing a September 16 court deadline for discovery, dragging proceedings on further.

Enlarge / Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies via video conference during a House antitrust subcommittee hearing on online platforms and market power on July 29, 2020. (credit: Getty Images)

Mark Zuckerberg was sued Monday by District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, who says the Facebook founder should be held financially responsible for the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The lawsuit was filed in DC Superior Court and demands that Zuckerberg pay civil penalties and restitution or damages.

"We're suing Mark Zuckerberg for his role in Facebook's misleading privacy practices and failure to protect millions of users' data," Racine wrote on Twitter . "Our investigation shows extensive evidence that Zuckerberg was personally involved in failures that led to the Cambridge Analytica incident. This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary. Misleading consumers, exposing their data, and violating the law come with consequences, not only for companies that breach that trust, but also corporate executives."

Racine's lawsuit says that "Facebook's 2010 decision to open up the Facebook Platform to third parties" was "the brainchild of Zuckerberg." This change let developers "access the massive trove of user data that Facebook had collected through the 'side door' of applications," the lawsuit said, continuing: