GDELTNew Mexico
Goldstein: -1.5Tone: -3.8
A New Mexico jury on Friday found Facebook liable for deceiving users about privacy protections on the platform in the latest legal setback against the social media giant that has already cost it billions of dollars.
The jury found over 43 million violations of state consumer protection law and it is now up to the judge to determine how much the company would pay, with attorneys representing the state asking for the maximum $5,000 penalty per violation.
“The verdict marks a significant victory for New Mexico consumers and holds one of the world’s largest technology companies accountable for its conduct,” the New Mexico Department of Justice said in a statement.
The two-week trial in Santa Fe centered on accusations that Facebook, owned by Meta, deceived users about a data breach stemming from a third-party personality quiz that harvested data from roughly 87 million profiles and sold it to a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to generate targeted ads. The now-defunct firm’s clients included the 2016 campaign for Donald Trump.
Jurors sided with prosecutors, finding Facebook made deceptive statements about protecting users’ data that affected New Mexico’s entire population of more than two million people. The jury also found Facebook misled the public about investigations into third-party app developers that harvest user data following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook claims state’s evidence was ‘outdated’
“We disagree with the verdict and will continue to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record,” said Alex Burgos, a spokesperson for Meta in an email.
During closing arguments, lawyers for Facebook claimed the state’s evidence was outdated and that despite having five years to gather material, New Mexico found only one other instance of a data breach.
The trial also addressed Facebook’s policies for removing harmful content. The state claimed the company favored certain accounts and allowed for violent, or inaccurate, content to proliferate. Facebook denied the claims, arguing the company has adapted its policies since the state’s lawsuit was filed in 2021 and that it removes 99% of content that violates standards.
The jury reviewed 34 statements made by the company about data protections and content policies, finding the company deceived users about its practices in almost every case.
In one of the few wins for the defense, jurors found the state didn’t prove that Facebook made false claims about removing harmful content, including misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Expert says impact on the company remains unclear
Despite jurors finding millions of violations, it’s unclear how much of an impact the case will have on the company’s bottom line, given how profitable Meta is.
“It’s unlikely that this is going to be the case that effectively penalizes the company in a meaningful way,” said Peter Ormerod, an associate professor of law at Villanova University.
Ormerod said the social media company has very high margins and previously skirted regulatory actions on its platforms.
If the state successfully persuaded the judge to award the maximum civil penalties for every violation, the company could owe over $200 billion, with interest accruing if it decides to appeal. The judge will have to weigh complex arguments from both sides about what penalties are fair. In a previous case, New Mexico secured $942 million over the platform’s policies to protect minors.
Ormerod commended the state’s “dogged prosecution” of the social media giant, but isn’t sure the judgment will be significant enough to change Meta’s ways.
“There’s been a lot of criticism that none of these amounts of money are enough to discipline the company,” Ormerod said.
Attorney for state said Facebook profited off harmful content
In a deposition played for jurors, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company had robust systems to determine whether content should be taken down. During closing arguments, Randi McGinn, an attorney representing the state, argued that Facebook profited off harmful content, which lawyers for the company denied.
“Meta’s platforms are forums for free expression. We have a First Amendment right to manage those platforms in a way we believe best serves the interests of our community. This means prioritizing free speech, protecting our users’ information and giving them control over their data,” said Burgos.
Judge will decide penalties at later date
The judge will decide on penalties at a later date, but that hearing hasn’t been set yet. Attorney General Raúl Torrez told reporters following the verdict that the judgment will be decided within weeks and that all money awarded will go into a fund for the state’s education system. The state is also seeking an injunction to stop similar practices in the future.
In August, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a multistate lawsuit involving child safety issues. Buried in the 130-page settlement was an agreement to release Meta from future liability related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, making New Mexico the only state to decide to pursue a case on its own. Florida was the only other state that did not sign the settlement, saying it was not tough enough on Meta, leaving the door open for future litigation.
Also this year, New Mexico won judgments totaling $942 million from Meta in a two-phase trial about the company’s safety protections for minors. The court ordered Meta to implement new safeguards, including age-verification technology and time limits on its platforms.
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Schuettler reported from Phoenix.
— Schuettler is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Open article →GDELTNew Mexico
Goldstein: -3.3Tone: -3.3
COURTS
New Mexico jury finds Meta violated consumer law
Judge will decide financial penalty based on millions of violations of state law
SANTA FE — For the second time this year, a New Mexico jury found that Meta Platforms violated a state consumer protection law, in this case by making false promises to protect Facebook users from harmful content and data misuse.
The verdict came Friday following two weeks of testimony in 1st Judicial District Court in Santa Fe before Judge Francis Mathew. Jurors began deliberating Wednesday afternoon after more than four hours of closing arguments.
Jurors were given the task of weighing the truthfulness of 29 statements made by Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, and deciding whether the company violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. The law is intended to protect consumers from false, deceptive and “unconscionable” trade practices.
Jurors found that in 26 of those 29 statements, Facebook was “false or deceptive” in their assurances to users about issues ranging from removal of hate speech and misinformation from the platform to users’ ability to control their personal data from use by third parties.
Randi McGinn, New Mexico’s lead attorney in the case, celebrated the verdict as a win for the state and for all users of social media.
“What a great verdict,” McGinn said after Mathew read the verdicts from the bench. “My word to all the social media companies that would not be truthful to New Mexicans is like, ‘Don’t mess with New Mexico.’ ”
Jurors also found Meta responsible for five “unconscionable” trade practices, including failure to notify users that their personal data was accessed by a third-party app developer and Facebook’s failure to remove hate speech and misinformation from the platform.
“Facebook has been lying for 16 years to everybody about protecting their information, all the while stealing all their private thoughts and dreams and hopes,” said McGinn, who was hired by the New Mexico Department of Justice. “It’s about time that somebody stood up to them and I’m just glad it’s New Mexico.”
A spokesperson for Meta responded Friday that the company disagrees with the verdict.
“Meta’s platforms are forums for free expression,” the company said in a statement. “We have a First Amendment right to manage those platforms in a way we believe best serves the interests of our community. This means prioritizing free speech, protecting our users; information, and giving them control over their data.”
Meta will continue “to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record,” the statement said.
In addition, jurors found that each statement applied to at least 1.4 million New Mexicans — the estimated number of New Mexico Facebook users in 2020.
That number potentially results in tens of millions of individual violations of the Unfair Practices Act, which has a maximum penalty of $5,000 per violation. McGinn estimated the total number of separate violations at 43,899,720.
It’s now up to Mathew to determine how much money Meta must pay New Mexico. Mathew plans to hold hearings to allow the two sides to argue the potential judgement.
McGinn said Meta is almost certain to appeal the case and that New Mexico is unlikely to get a paycheck until the appeal is resolved. “We aren’t going to see the money for four or five years” while the appeal plays out, she said.
McGinn told jurors in closing arguments Wednesday that Meta made false assurances that it would protect the personal data of Facebook users. Instead, she argued, Facebook profited by selling users’ data to third-party app developers.
“They turned our dreams into data that they could sell to advertisers," McGinn told jurors. Meta officials lied when they told Facebook users that their data would not be sold to third-party app developers, she said.
Meta’s attorney, Dane Butswinkas, said in closing arguments this week that New Mexico’s case is based on a data breach that occurred more than a decade ago and doesn’t reflect safeguards Meta implemented in recent years to protect users from data misuse and harmful content.
“We’ve heard a lot of talk about Cambridge Analytica,” Butswinkas told jurors. “That was a sale by an app — a legitimate app, a teacher at Cambridge (University), to Cambridge Analytica in 2014. Here we are in 2026.”
The trial stems from a 2021 lawsuit filed by then-New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas in response to the decade-old Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal.
The suit was part of a wave of data-privacy actions filed by state attorneys general after news broke in 2018 that London-based Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data for political campaigns. Clients of the now-defunct firm included the 2016 president campaign of President Donald Trump.
The trial marks the third time New Mexico and Meta have faced off in a Santa Fe courtroom this year.
In a 2023 lawsuit filed against Meta Platforms and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Attorney General Raúl Torrez alleged the company failed to protect children from sexual abuse, online solicitation and human trafficking. That lawsuit led to two high-profile trials this year in 1st Judicial District Court in Santa Fe.
On Aug. 6, District Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to pay $567 million to help repair harm caused by the company’s platforms. That order followed a jury verdict in March that ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties to New Mexico for violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act.
In August, Meta reached a landmark settlement agreeing to pay $17 billion to 47 states to settle lawsuits alleging harms against children. Within that 130-page settlement was a separate settlement in which Meta agreed to pay nearly $460 million to settle lawsuits filed by 47 states related to Cambridge Analytica.
Meta agreed to make “Cambridge Payments” ranging from about $4 million to Alaska to over $18 million to Massachusetts, the settlement shows. The deal releases Meta from all claims related to Cambridge Analytica, including any future claims.
But New Mexico declined to join the multistate settlement and instead has followed its own path in litigation against Meta, including claims related to Cambridge Analytica.
Olivier Uyttebrouck covers the courts and legal affairs. You can reach him at olivier@abqjournal.com.
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Open article →GDELTNew Mexico
Goldstein: 4.0Tone: -5.2
New Mexico jury rules Meta misled state residents about data privacy
The company is still paying for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
A New Mexico jury has found Meta violated the state's Unfair Practices Act and misled residents about their privacy and how the company handles misinformation, Reuters reports. The trial was the result of a 2021 lawsuit filed by the state in response to Meta's Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data harvested from Facebook was used to target political advertising during the 2016 election.
The state's original lawsuit claimed that Meta misrepresented what it let third-party apps do with its data, maintained privacy settings that were unclear or vague and falsely said it applied policies around hate speech equally to everyone, among other issues. Reuters writes that Meta's lawyers admitted the company had made mistakes with how it handled misinformation and privacy in the past, but denied it sold users' data or that it benefited from hate speech.
A judge has yet to rule how much Meta will be fined. Engadget has asked the company to comment on the case and the jury's decision. We'll update this article if we hear back.
Cambridge Analytica scraping and using information from 50 million Facebook users largely without their consent is one of several black marks on Meta's resume, one it conveniently distanced itself from by rebranding to Meta in 2021. The company has reached multiple settlement agreements in response to Cambridge Analytica in the US, UK and Australia. Most recently, it settled with 47 US states over child safety concerns in an $18 billion settlement that included a $459 million payment to specifically resolve existing Cambridge Analytica lawsuits, Reuters writes. New Mexico and Florida declined to participate in that part of the settlement, which allowed this trial to happen and a jury to ultimately side against Meta again.
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