Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion in New Mexico Facebook Privacy Case
Summary
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found Facebook made misleading statements about privacy and other practices. Meta says it expects to win on appeal.
Key points
- A New Mexico jury found that Meta and its leadership made 26 misleading statements about data privacy, hate speech, and other subjects.
- The judge said post-audience controls did not necessarily limit what outside app developers could access; separate settings governed that access.
- The New Mexico Department of Justice said the jury found 43,899,725 violations. The count estimated the audience for each statement, not the number of people whose data was taken.
- The judge reduced a penalty exceeding $219 billion under state law to $25 billion; Meta says it expects to win on appeal.
- The lawsuit followed revelations that Cambridge Analytica obtained information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app.
- The article advises limiting shared personal details, reviewing app permissions and tracking settings, and being cautious with connected apps; it notes that privacy settings cannot guarantee privacy.
Article Details
- Event Type
- New Mexico civil consumer-protection judgment over Facebook’s data privacy practices and representations, resulting in a $25 billion penalty against Meta.
- Impact
- A jury found 43,899,725 violations of state law, a count based on the estimated audience for misleading statements rather than the number of individual people whose data was taken. The judge reduced a penalty that could have exceeded $219 billion to $25 billion. The penalties are directed to New Mexico’s school system, not individual users. Meta says it expects to prevail on appeal.
People
C.J. MahoneyMeta’s chief legal officer, who said the company is confident it will prevail on appeal and characterized the lawsuit as an attempt to impose a tax on speech.Francis J. MathewNew Mexico judge who ordered Meta to pay $25 billion and reduced the penalty from an amount exceeding $219 billion.Mark ZuckerbergA 2010 statement by Zuckerberg about sharing users’ personal information was among the statements the jury found misleading.Raúl TorrezNew Mexico Attorney General who said state law directs the penalties to the state’s school system.