(NEXSTAR) – The long-awaited payouts from the record-breaking $725 million Facebook settlement are finally being sent out to the millions of users who qualified.
The distribution of payments will begin in August 2025 and continue for 10 weeks, Angeion, the company responsible for administering the settlement, confirmed online.
The saga started a few years ago when Facebook parent company Meta agreed to pay $725 million to settle claims it allowed people’s personal data to be shared with third parties. The most famous third party to get access was Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The massive settlement made headlines when it was granted final approval in 2023 because of its size and scope. Basically anyone who had a Facebook account in the U.S. between 2007 and 2022 qualified for a piece of the huge sum.
At the time of final approval, Angeion was still working through approximately 28 million claims, verifying which claims were valid and throwing out fraudulent or duplicative ones.
“As far as we can tell that’s the largest number of claims ever filed in a class action in the United States,” Lesley Weaver, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the case, said in court.
In late 2023, Angeion confirmed it had validated at least 17 million of the 28 million claims filed. That means at least 17 million people should be receiving a payment starting over the next 10 or so weeks.
But because so many people qualified, the size of each individual payout was expected to be relatively small. The exact amount depends on how long you’ve had an active Facebook account, but lawyers told Judge Vince Chhabria they expected the median payment to be around $30.
If you were one of the millions who submitted a claim by the August 2023 deadline, and your claim was approved, you’ll get your payment by the method you selected when you filed. It could come as a direct deposit to your bank account, a prepaid gift card in the mail or a PayPal payment.
Nexstar reached out to Angeion for more details on how many people ended up qualifying for a payout, what date the first payments started or will start, and exactly how big each payment could be, but didn’t hear back.
It has taken nearly two years since the settlement was approved to start issuing payments because the proceeding was delayed by multiple appeals. Both appeals filed by objectors were resolved in May 2025.
