‘Facebook’s wrongdoing’: Why has Meta been fined $25bn in New Mexico?

The tech giant has been accused of misleading users regarding data privacy linked to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Save Share A judge in New Mexico hasordered Meta Platforms to pay the US state $25bnafter a court found the company intentionally misled consumers about the privacy of their data. “Facebook’s wrongdoing – over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public – goes to ⁠the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his order, which came more than three weeks after the verdict. The judge found that a penalty of more than $219bn was warranted based on state law, but he reduced the figure to $25bn. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said it was one of the largest, if not the largest, single state verdict against ⁠a company in United States history. CJ Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said the company was confident it would win on appeal. “This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” Mahoney said in a statement. “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech ‌to enforce new rules for what people can say online.” New Mexico’s attorney general sued Meta in 2021 following revelations thatCambridge Analytica had harvested personal datafrom as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm, harvested Facebook data to generate targeted political advertisements during the 2016 election season, when it worked for Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign. The state accused Meta of lying to Facebook users in New Mexico about who had access to their data and its handling of hate speech ⁠and misinformation posted on the platform. Lawyers for the state cited a 2010 Washington Post op-ed in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the company did not sell user data. They alleged the company knew third parties had broad access to users’ data and tolerated hate speech ⁠or other harmful content when it benefitted the company’s bottom line. Torrez, New Mexico’s attorney general, said the judgement “should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley”. Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits and pressure from lawmakers over the impact of Instagram and Facebook on teen mental health....