A jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, found on Friday that Facebook deceived users about how it protected their data, including in its response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Jurors found more than 43 million violations of the state’s consumer protection law, Mikella Schuettler reported for the Associated Press.
The count is based on the number of people affected by Meta’s misleading statements, Diana Novak Jones reported for Reuters. Judge Francis Mathew can award up to $5,000 per violation, and the state will ask for the maximum. If he awards that for every violation, Meta could owe more than $200 billion, according to the AP. The judge will set the penalty at a hearing on 1 October.
What the jury found
The two-week trial centred on a third-party app that harvested data from as many as 87 million Facebook users. That data went to Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm whose clients included Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
New Mexico’s attorney general filed the lawsuit in 2021. The state accused Meta of misleading residents about how it shared user data with third parties, according to Reuters. It also accused Meta of misleading them about how it enforced its policies on hate speech and misinformation.
Jurors found 26 of the 29 statements the state identified were misleading, Reuters reported. They included comments about user data, hate speech and misinformation. The jury rejected the claims that Meta misled consumers about its efforts to remove harmful content and about its fact-checking.
The jury also found that Facebook misled the public about its investigations into app developers that harvested user data, the AP reported.
Both sides respond
“For years, Facebook operated as if the rules that apply to everyone else didn’t apply to them. Today, a jury of New Mexicans said otherwise,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement.
Torrez called the verdict historic in the statement, which CBS News reported.
Torrez said any money awarded would go into a fund for the state’s education system, the AP reported. The state will also ask the judge to order changes at Meta, Torrez told reporters, according to Reuters. They could include corrections to past statements and an audit of how Meta manages user data.
“We disagree with the verdict and will continue to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record,” Meta spokesperson Alex Burgos said.
Burgos added that Meta has a First Amendment right to manage its platforms. At trial, Meta’s lawyers argued that the state had cherry-picked snippets of statements and ignored their context, Reuters reported. Meta also denied that it sells users’ information.
New Mexico’s second verdict against Meta
It is the second time in six months that a Santa Fe jury has ruled against Meta. In March, a jury found Meta misled users about young people’s safety and ordered it to pay $375 million. After a second phase of that trial, a judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a teen health fund, Reuters reported. TNW covered the child safety trial at the time.
In August, after settlement talks, Meta settled child safety claims with 47 states. As part of that deal, it agreed to pay $459 million to states that had sued over Cambridge Analytica. New Mexico was not part of the settlement, so its case went to trial, according to Reuters.
In Europe this month, a court in Frankfurt found Meta liable for scam ads.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
