Since Facebook settled a multi-million dollar privacy lawsuit this year, millions of the users applied for a proportion of the money the social media platform agreed to pay out as part of the court deal.
Since the application deadline, more than 500,000 Americans who applied have had their settlement claims rejected – and more rejection letters may still be on their way as claims are sorted through.
Here’s everything you need to know if you applied, including how to tell if your application has been rejected, where you can check the status of your application, and why it's hard to predict the date you might get your payment.
How to Tell If Your Facebook Settlement Claim Has Been Rejected
After settling a privacy lawsuit, Tech giant Meta – owner of Facebook – agreed to pay a huge $725 million back to users of its platform who were impacted by its sub-par practices. A notification was sent to Facebook users in April to inform them that they were eligible to apply.
Applications were opened over the summer, and users were given until August 25th to apply – and, by September 7th, over 17 million claims had been preliminarily validated.
On October 11th, the judge gave the final approval for the settlement to be actioned – but only after multiple objections. Now, we're in the appeals period – and two objectors have already filed appeals.
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According to The Hill, 28 million Americans have applied for a settlement through Angeion, the company managing the case. This makes it the most filed-for claim in US history. As we've already covered, 500,000 of those claims have been rejected.
If your claim is one of the unlucky ones to be rejected, you may have already been notified by email. Ensure you check your inbox as well as the spam folder of the email address you handed over in order to apply for the claim. If you have been rejected, you have up to 10 days to appeal the decision.
It might be worth getting Angeion to double-check your claim. When companies are processing this many applications, errors sometimes happen – and this is the biggest single claim in American history.
How to Check the Status of Your Facebook Settlement Claim Application
The latest updates relating to the Facebook privacy settlement are available on the claims portal that Angeion has set up to manage the claims.
You can contact Angeion by phone if you have any questions with the number provided on the site, and browse the FAQs section to find the answers to common queries your fellow applicants are asking.
Bear in mind that the Facebook privacy settlement discussed in this article is separate from the location-tracking settlement that Facebook has been fighting alongside it, and has a separate claims process.
What is the Facebook Settlement Payout Date?
Unfortunately, there’s still no hard date that successful claimants can expect to be paid on – the legal battle continues on, even though the claim has been granted final approval.
Currently, the Angeion claims portal linked above in this article explains that “despite the Court's Order granting both Motions and overruling the Objections filed, two Objectors have filed Notices of Appeals”.
In continues, adding that “settlement payments cannot be distributed to eligible claimants until the appeals are resolved. The time frame for resolving an appeal can vary widely, and we will know more as the appeals proceed.”
It’s now thought that when the payments are made, the median payout will be around $30 per claimant.
