Meta could owe more than $200B in penalties after a New Mexico jury found Facebook committed more than 43M violations of the state’s consumer protection law by misleading users about how it protected their data after the Cambridge Analytica breach. Though if history teaches us anything, it’ll probably end up with a slap on the wrist and pay a fraction of that amount.
Quick Backstory: New Mexico sued Facebook back in 2021, after a personality quiz app harvested data from about 87M Facebook profiles and passed it to Cambridge Analytica. The state accused Facebook of misleading users about how much control they had over their data, and about how seriously it investigated the third-party app developers who were scraping it. The suit also claimed Facebook made false statements about fighting hate speech and misinformation on its platform.
Flash forward to last week: The jury sided with the state on 26 of the 29 statements it challenged, agreeing that Facebook misled people about how much control they had over their data and about its investigations into data-harvesting app developers. However, it rejected the state’s claims about how Facebook removed harmful content. New Mexico is seeking the $5,000 maximum for each violation, and the judge will set penalties at an October 1 hearing.
This is New Mexico’s second big win against Meta this year. The state stayed out of the August settlement between Meta and 47 states over allegations that it built Instagram and Facebook to hook kids, because it had already taken Meta to trial over child safety on its own and won.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he hopes the message is “unmistakable for Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta and well beyond that: Anyone in big tech who thinks that they can mislead and misrepresent the way in which they do business in the State of New Mexico will not be tolerated.” He added that any penalty would go into a special fund for New Mexico schools and students.
Meta, of course, disagrees with the verdict and said it will continue to defend itself “against efforts to distort our record,” which likely means it plans to appeal.
