A New Mexico judge ruled Wednesday that Meta must pay $25 billion to the state after a jury found last month that the social media giant had deceived users in a case related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to media reports.
The penalty comes a couple of months after Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle claims brought by 48 other states, including allegations tied to Cambridge Analytica.
Meta slammed the case as “a tax on speech.”
“This ruling… makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” Meta said in a statement. “We are confident we will prevail on appeal.”
Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm found to have improperly harvested personal data from millions of Facebook users for targeted political advertising, notably during the 2016 US presidential election.
Revelations at the time showed that the firm had obtained data gathered through a personality quiz app called “thisisyourdigitallife,” which was installed by about 270,000 users but also collected information on their friends.
In total, the app reached roughly 87 million Facebook users worldwide.
Facebook learned in December 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had acquired the data but did not disclose it publicly until 2018, after a whistleblower came forward, sparking a major political scandal.
Jurors in the New Mexico trial found that the misconduct affected all of the state’s more than 2.1 million residents.
“We disagree with the verdict and will continue to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement in September.
New Mexico Attorney-General Raul Torrez hailed the ruling as a “historic” win.
This case was “about whether corporations can mislead consumers about what happens to their personal information without facing meaningful consequences. New Mexico stood its ground,” Torrez said in a statement.
– Penalties pile up –
Meta has faced a slew of lawsuits in recent months.
Earlier this year, New Mexico won nearly $1 billion in combined penalties against Meta in a separate case over harms to children.
In March, a jury in that case ordered Meta to pay $375 million after finding the company liable for endangering children by making them vulnerable to predators on its platforms, among other harms.
In August, a judge ordered Meta to implement product changes and pay an additional $567 million to the state to fund the treatment and prevention of harms caused by Facebook and Instagram.
That same month, Meta agreed to pay up to $17.7 billion to 52 US states, plus Washington, DC, to settle claims that it deliberately engineered its platforms to hook young users, misled the public about the risks and unlawfully collected data from children under 13.
As part of that settlement, Meta agreed to make significant changes to Facebook and Instagram accounts used by teenagers, and portions of the settlement hinge on other major social media companies agreeing to similar changes.
In September, TikTok agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and enact limits for teen users, avoiding a trial over claims related to child safety on the platform.
TikTok previously settled other cases that were headed for trial, including a Los Angeles lawsuit brought by a young woman and a suit from a Kentucky school district.
In a landmark trial that concluded in March, Meta and YouTube were convicted by a Los Angeles jury, which found both companies were responsible for a teenager’s social media addiction.
That jury awarded the teenager $6 million.
AFP