Meta ordered to pay New Mexico $25bn over Cambridge Analytica
Judge Francis Mathew in Santa Fe set the penalty on 21 October, after a jury found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection law. New Mexico had asked for $35bn to $45bn. Meta says it will appeal.
Meta has been ordered to pay the state of New Mexico $25 billion. Judge Francis Mathew of the First Judicial District in Santa Fe set the penalty on 21 October, closing a case that grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago. The New Mexico Department of Justice’s own release calls it a historic penalty against Facebook.
The figure has a paper trail. In September a jury found the company had committed more than 43 million violations of the state’s consumer protection law by misleading users about what happened to their data. The state wanted somewhere between $35bn and $45bn. The judge came in under that, though not by much.
Where it started
The story is more than ten years old. A personality quiz in a third-party app scooped up data from roughly 87 million Facebook profiles, which ended up sold to Cambridge Analytica. The consultancy used it to target political ads in the 2016 US presidential election, and folded in 2018.
Forty-eight other US states settled with Facebook over similar complaints. New Mexico chose to go to trial on its own, and Attorney General Raúl Torrez now says the result is the largest single-state verdict ever against the company. The state says the money goes to its education fund.
Meta is not paying yet
The company has already said it will appeal. Chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney says Meta is confident it will win at the next level, and describes the case as an attempt to put a tax on speech. At trial, Meta’s lawyers argued that the state’s evidence was dated and that New Mexico had found only one other data breach.
Nobody writes a cheque until the appeal is settled. Still, the number is five times the $5bn the US Federal Trade Commission fined the company in 2019 over the same scandal, and it tells other attorneys general that a courtroom can pay better than a settlement.
Meanwhile in Europe
This side of the Atlantic, the pressure on Meta arrives through a different door: the EU’s Digital Services Act, with Brussels accusing Instagram and Facebook of addictive design. In the US the bill comes from state courts. In the EU, from the Commission.
By Beatriz Mota
Image: LandofEnchantment Pics / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
