The case stemmed from the nearly decade-old Cambridge Analytica scandal.
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If you thought Meta's self-inflicted blows from the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal were over, think again. On Wednesday, a New Mexico judge ordered the company to pay the state $25 billion in penalties, having found that the company made misleading statements about the privacy of consumers in the state. "It has been a long time coming holding Big Tech accountable," New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a press conference (via Reuters).
The case, filed in 2021, wasn't directly about the data harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Instead, it targeted Facebook's statements over the years regarding user data, privacy settings and content moderation.
In September, a Santa Fe jury found that Meta violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act by misleading residents on those issues. The jury counted a staggering 43 million violations. At up to $5,000 for each violation, the maximum penalty came to about $219 billion.
The state asked for $35 billion to $40 billion, with New Mexico attorney Randi McGinn saying the court "should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price." Meta requested no more than $3.45 billion. Judge Francis Mathew ended up at $25 billion. He didn't hold back in his ruling, describing Facebook's promised post-scandal investigation as "willfully ineffective" while noting "the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook's repeated misstatements."
This lawsuit is separate from one the company recently settled with nearly every other US state over child safety concerns. That included nearly $459 million specifically for Cambridge Analytica data harvesting claims. New Mexico skipped that settlement, which opened the door to this trial.
The money will go to New Mexico's school system, with interest accruing at 15 percent a year until the penalty is paid in full. Meta has said it will appeal, with chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney calling it "a tax on speech."