Hello, welcome to Emlex's podcast back in your feed after a few weeks away to coincide with the

Northern Hemisphere summer. I hope you've had a chance to relax that all is well, wherever you

may be listening to us today. I'm James Panicki, M-Mex's Asia-Pacific senior editor. Clearly nowhere

near the Northern Hemisphere at the moment. Apologies for sounding a bit congested today as I

recover from a cold at the end of what has been a wet and challenging winter.

Now, here at Emlex, we've taken advantage of the break to review our podcast format a little.

We'll be sticking to one topic per program to make the operation a little more nimble and social media friendly.

But we will be aiming to expand on the most topical story of the week. And that brings us to

a California lawsuit in which Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, was sued by aggrieved

users of the platform in the wake of revelations that personal data was shared with third-party

companies, including Cambridge Analytica.

As MLEX readers already know, META has agreed to settle that lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.

So it's all over, right?

Well, not so fast.

Firstly, META needs to contend with a judge who feels that the social media giant hasn't been taking demands for documents

and witness scrutiny seriously, and that is in fact turning into a significant procedural development.

And then there's the open question about what this settlement might mean for lawsuits and

enforcement action against Meta over the Cambridge Analytica breaches in other

jurisdictions, both in the US and internationally. Mike Swift is MX's chief global digital

risk correspondent and he joins me now from our offices in San Francisco. Mike, firstly, what was

Facebook slash Meta accused of in this lawsuit?

And why did the company decide to settle now some four years into the case?

...