Second payments from the $725 million Facebook settlement are set to begin going out on June 9, opening a new round of checks for more than 15 million eligible claimants. The settlement administrator will continue sending the bonus payments over the next four weeks, with notices going out by email three to four days before each payment is issued.
The second wave matters because it is tied to money left in the fund after the first payout round, and because only people who already received and cashed an initial payment can get another one. That means the new money will reach a narrower group than the original claim pool, even though anyone in the United States who used Facebook between May 24, 2007, and Dec. 22, 2022, could have filed a claim by the Aug. 25, 2023, deadline.
A California court approved the extra distribution in May after the settlement, finalized in 2023, still had about $95 million available for bonus payments once administrative costs were deducted from the remaining $100 million. The administrator estimates the second checks will range from $4.67 to $7.32, with each person’s amount based on allocation points, which reflect how many months a user was on Facebook during the eligibility period. Someone who used the platform for two years, or 24 months, would have 24 allocation points.
The case grew out of several lawsuits filed after the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when Facebook faced allegations that it made user data accessible to third parties without permission and failed to monitor how that data was used. The lawsuits were consolidated in 2018, and in December 2022 Meta and the plaintiffs agreed to settle rather than go to trial, even as Meta denied wrongdoing.
What remains unclear is which eligible claimants will land at the top or bottom of the second-payment range. For now, the important date is June 9, when the next round starts, and the real test is whether the administrator can move the money smoothly through the following four weeks without delay.
