Meta Platforms has been ordered to pay a $25 billion civil penalty in New Mexico after a jury found that the company violated the state’s consumer protection law more than 43 million times. Here is what we know.
What happened
As per Bloomberg, Meta Platforms Inc. has been ordered to pay a $25 billion civil penalty to the state of New Mexico. The case is about the company misleading consumers. It grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The fine was issued by state court Judge Francis Mathew.
How the penalty was decided
As per Bloomberg, a jury in Santa Fe found that Meta broke the state’s consumer protection law more than 43 million times. The jury based this on widely seen misleading statements made by the company and its top executives. These statements were about how it handled hate speech and user data.
Under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, the judge could order a penalty of up to $5,000 for each violation.
What the state said
The two-week trial was held in the First The two-week trial took place at the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico. Attorney General Raul Torrez accused Meta of lying to Facebook users about its privacy policies and how it handled their personal data after the Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago.
According to Bloomberg Law, Torrez also accused Meta of misleading the public about how it handled content and hate speech. He pointed to evidence that some high-profile accounts were not checked as strictly as regular users.
Jurors watched video testimony from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
What was the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
The leak involved a political consulting firm that used data taken improperly from millions of Facebook users. The firm used it to target voters for Donald Trump before the 2016 election.
Meta’s past settlements
Meta has often paid large sums to settle cases linked to the leak:
$5 billion to the Federal Trade Commission in 2019
$725 million in 2022 to settle a consumer class action
$459 million this summer to settle cases from 46 states and two territories
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New Mexico went its own way
New Mexico has been a major legal challenge for Meta. The state chose to take the company to court on its own instead of joining other states in legal action against it.
The latest verdict comes months after New Mexico became the first US state to win a jury verdict against Meta over claims that Facebook and Instagram harm teenagers’ mental health and expose children to sexual exploitation. That case resulted in a $375 million penalty. Meta must also pay another $567 million to fund program to address the youth mental health crisis, as per Bloomberg.
