Facebook settlement payment sizes revealed: Here’s the minimum (and maximum) you’ll get

(NEXSTAR) – Documents filed in a California court last week are finally giving us a better idea of how big individual payouts will be in the $725 million class action lawsuit over Facebook users’ privacy.

We’ve long known that big pot of money would get cut down substantially by legal fees and administrative costs, before being divvied up among a huge group of people. Because the class action lawsuit affected basically all U.S. Facebook users between 2007 and 2022, millions of people were eligible for a piece of the pie.

How big will your payment be?

The smallest possible payment is $4.89 and the maximum payment is $38.36, according to court documents filed on Friday. The average payment will be $29.43 (which is pretty close to the estimate we knew prior to this).

If you have fewer points, because you weren’t on Facebook for that entire time, you’ll receive a smaller payment. The minimum payment of $4.89 “corresponds with the payment to Authorized Claimants who were Facebook Users with activated accounts for 24 months during the Class Period.”

Whether your payment is closer to $5 or $40 depends on how long you had a Facebook account during the class period. There’s a point system in place, with one point awarded for every month you had a Facebook account between May 2007 and December 2022. The maximum number of points you can have is 188, which would give you the maximum payment of around $38.

Any amount smaller than that makes it more likely people will not redeem the payment at all, the court documents state.

What is the class action lawsuit about?

The social media company agreed to pay $725 million to settle claims it violated users’ privacy by sharing their data with third parties. The most famous third party was Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The firm harvested the data of as many as 87 million Facebook users, the Associated Press reported.

While Meta agreed to the payout, it denies wrongdoing.

The distribution of payments has started, according to Angeion, and is expected to continue for 10 weeks.