Meta Data Liability Verdict
New Mexico Jury Finds Meta Liable for Deceptive Data Practices
Anonymous
A New Mexico jury found Meta liable for unfair and deceptive practices, concluding Facebook misled users about how their personal data was shared and how it enforced rules on misinformation, hate speech and favored users. Jurors identified more than 43 million violations of state law. The 2021 case followed revelations that Cambridge Analytica obtained Facebook users’ data through a third-party app and used it to profile voters. A judge will determine civil penalties; state attorneys are seeking up to $5,000 per violation. Meta disputes the verdict and says it will continue to defend itself.
Key Points
1
Jurors found 31 of the 34 statements challenged by New Mexico to be unfair or deceptive; each statement was found to have reached at least an estimated 1.4 million state Facebook users in 2020.
2
New Mexico alleged that the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting affected about 350,000 residents without valid consent.
3
Meta's lawyers argued that the state cherry-picked snippets of the company’s statements and left out context in which Meta acknowledged its privacy and misinformation handling was imperfect.
4
The trial lasted two weeks, and the state's case focused in part on statements by Mark Zuckerberg and company blog posts that allegedly led users to believe they controlled their shared information.
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